A Grave With No Name

Everything about Mountain Debris suggests A Grave With No Name spent the last few years living a rustic life in a log cabin somewhere deep in the Southern U.S., surrounded by old 4AD and Homestead vinyl. But the field recordings, the pastoral motif, the evocative song titles, they're all the work of a shadowy trio from the UK that raid the Americana ideal and drag it through London gutters to add copious amounts of scuzz and fuzz. Recorded in the bedroom of singer/guitarist Alex Shields, Mountain Debris is a collection of seven-inches and unreleased material that gathers vaporous ballads, tribal campfire songs, grungy tremors and iridescent melodies into a cohesive, penetrating whole. In the spirit of the Microphones, the raw, barebones production results in some narcotic-laced fog, stressing the overdriven, grainy guitars and bleeding, incredible melody on "And We Parted Ways At Mt. Jade" and "Silver." And while Shields hits his murmuring falsetto in a daze, he can give more tender songs like "Stone Setting" and "The Underpass" the same emotive acumen and tender consistency as Bon Iver. Sprawling, disparate and mysterious, Mountain Debris is a sublime woodland fantasy imagined from the haunting depths of urban decay.