A Grave With No Name - Mon 15th Mar
+ Yuck, Celestial Bodies, No Pain In Pop DJs
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A Grave With No Name - Mountain Debris
A Grave With No Name mine their own distinctive vein of haunted, freaked folk/ art rock, tracing delicate fissures in the emotional radiography of loss and longing to spellbinding effect. “Mountain Debris” collects together tracks from their releases to date and adds a slew of previously unheard recordings to create a remarkably beautiful and cohesive whole, albeit one that always seems to be on the verge of imploding into itself, so rarefied and brittle is its beauty.
But then, nothing about this record is remotely predictable. The fragile, windblown melodies of “The Sun Rises” and “And We Parted Ways at Mt Jade” open the album, only to be blown away by the stadium-sized guitars of “Sofia”. Similarly, “Silver” roars out of the speakers with almost-anthemic immediacy and urgency, while elsewhere the trembling, piano-led “Underpass” sounds like the most moving song that Palace Music never wrote, and “Open Water” finds the band on fine, mischievous form. 16 songs long and yet still clocking in at just over half an hour, “Mountain Debris” is something of a small miracle.
Reviews:
"A uniquely 21st century take on lo-fi that compels spectral washes of sound to tussle with fuzy guitar breaks in a considered game of cat and mouse. 8/10."
NME
"A shoegazing masterpiece to round off a year of lo-fi brilliance."
Dummy
"Overall contemplative and haunting, it takes several spins before the album's full depths and stark beauty can be fully discovered. With this album they've cemented that they'll be remembered, if not by the masses then at least by those that really matter."
Loud and Quiet
"Largely conceived in the London bedroom studio of frontman Alex Shields, Mountain Debris is an impressive collection of distortion-bathed pop tunes that manages to stand out, even in an increasingly crowded lo-fi field. Combining a rough-around-the-edges pop pedigree with the warm fuzz of C86, the bleak soundscapes of vintage shoegaze, and just a hint of sweet psychedelic swirl, A Grave With No Name crafts impressively affecting songs that rarely crack the two-minute mark. It's something like Jay Reatard on Quaaludes. Whether it's woozy acoustic pop ("Lavender," "Open Water"), noisier shitgaze ("And We Parted Ways at Mt. Jade), or stompy proto-grunge that tugs at your heartstrings (album standout "Sofia"), Mountain Debris is a stellar first effort."
XL8R
YUCK
They're still so new they have only played one live show, but they're about to go on tour with Egyptian Hip Hop and Veronica Falls. Oh, and they're not yuck at all, they're pretty good. We've been talking for the last year or so about a shoegazing revival, and Yuck do fit in with some of those outfits – only their version of shoegazing resonates with memories of the American bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr), or at least the British ones who wanted to be American (Teenage Fanclub, Swervedriver). They've got a song called Operation that sounds so much like the Youth's Teenage Riot, Thurston et al might sue if they weren't slackers entirely at odds with the concept of ownership, while another track, Georgia, is so Creation 1992 Alan McGee ... won't sue either because it's only rock'n'roll and he likes it, likes it, yes he does (rumour has it that McGee's next Guardian.co.uk/music blog is, in fact, a strenuous defence of Rolling Stones between Goat's Head Soup and Black and Blue). The ballad Automatic is spartan yet spectral, like something Spiritualized might have done to conflate religiosity and druggy devotion. Suck is also slow, like a Gram Parsons tune covered by Jason Pierce at his most, um, medicated. "Every day was a Christian holiday," it opens, going on to rhyme "crucifixion" with "benediction", "addiction" and "cold affliction". Let it come down, etc.
The buzz: "The demo of Automatic is one of the finest things I've heard in this young decade."
File next to: Dinosaur Jr, MBV, Sonic Youth, St Deluxe.
