By MAX ASAYESH-BROWN, St. Petersburg High

Don’t be fooled by the seemingly modest seven-track length of Mountains’ baby album Centralia — some songs reach impressive but almost obnoxious lengths of 20 minutes. But in the aptly named instrumental “drone” genre, Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp make it easy not to care. An appropriate approach to Centralia is to simply treat it as one ridiculously lengthy song.

I’m unfamiliar with Mountains’ previous work, but, close-minded as this sounds, I’m quite confident I’m getting the gist of it within the first 25 minutes (three songs) of this album. Drone music is characterized by repetition — and in this respect, Centralia is very good for what it is — but the idea of such a genre seems, for lack of a better word, boring.

Instrumental music is rarely a bad thing, especially when the instruments are played with dexterity, so Mountains deserves credit. But … it’s not highway music. It’s more fitting for some sort of long-term activity that is simplified by a lack of lyrics, like writing an essay. In truth, Mountains is not in the same lane as most instrumental music; the repetition makes it monotonous. But worse off, it forfeits the significance of the music.

There’s very much to appreciate in mellow music with no lyrics, but very little in mellow music that simply maintains a seemingly endless loop with no semblance of direction. Perhaps Anderegg and Holktkamp would be more prosperous composing movie scores.