A Grave with No Name
Mountain Debris
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Label: Lefse
Londoner Alex Shields may have dubbed his recording project/sometime-live band with the gloomiest of monikers- A Grave with No Name- as an emo/goth-baiting funny, but intertextual guffaws aside, that mouthful of a name can’t help but cast a grim, Peter Murphy-colored pallor over his debut full-length, Mountain Debris. Stitched together from a handful of previous EPs and some newly minted tracks, Mountain Debris is very much the product of the bedrooms and unorthodox spaces (with some time put in at an empty church, Aqualung-style) it was recorded in.
Shields’ material evokes a younger-sounding, grimier, lo-fi Bon Iver; over ramshackle percussion. Shields gets plaintive with acoustic guitar, provides color and drive with a fuzzed-out electric and his multi-tracked falsetto, usually echoing off into eternity, stands as the major melodic force. His lyrics are usually indiscernible in the lo-fi-reverb continuum, working better as an instrument helping to evoke images of the songs’ titles (“Open Water,” “Fire Island,” “Ghosts and Stones”) than as any sort of narrative force.
Though there are 16 songs here, Mountain Debris’ longest track clocks in at 2:50, making the record an effective disc of dour mood music and not a sprawling work of pastoral darkness that Shields’ titles might suggest. This is also a weakness of the record, as much of the songs sound like what they are- bedroom recordings- and really, sonic sketches of ideas that do not necessarily cry out for further pursuit. There are those that do though; the distorted stomp of “Sofia” sounds like Neil Young’s Zuma recalled through a Nyquil haze, “Horses” is an unsettling nightmare ride through the woods and “Silver” sounds like, of all things, an early Filter track with its synthesized beats, amplifier sludge and Shields’ processed voice keening above it all.
Though these tracks do catch the ear and make one wish they were produced and fleshed-out a little further, I can’t help but think that would also buff Shields out to such a degree that he’d sound like just about anyone else on either side of the pond composing dark, woodsy indie rock. As it stands, Mountain Debris works best when listened to as a collection of demos. Most folks, if they bother with demos at all, are interested in them only if that particular artist has their devotion; it’s yet to be seen whether A Grave with No Name can sustain any serious acolytes.
by Chris Middleman
