A Grave With No Names' Alex Shields talks all things lo-fi and his wired desert island
Like it or not there’s no denying lo-fi has made major changes to music again. Whether it’s a surf rock band in a tunnel (Ganglians, Real Estate) or Neil Young singing down a tin can (Woods) the format has been a major driving force in the alternative scene. You can barely go to a festival without an influx of bands tagged lo-fi been strewn across the bill. Hell, they’ve even launched their own – massively successful – labels from the confines of their bedrooms. These kids are doing it for themselves.
A dude in a Weezer t-shirt may not strike you as the next great thing in British lo-fi, but on the basis of ‘Mountain Debris’ (the said dude in question wrote the tracks in his bedroom) there are major hints at this. ‘Sofia’ is turning into something of a summer anthem (for me at least), and I can’t think of many things cooler blasting out of a boombox across east London’s various parks. Live, Alex Shields takes it up a notch and injects a whole hearted heap of grunge into A Grave With No Names' hazy carcass with his newly formed three-piece. We find out more.
Your MySpace reads “These are some songs that I recorded in my bedroom. Hope you don't think they suck too bad.” The response doesn’t seem to suggest so?
I wrote that when I created the MySpace page to host two tracks I had made in my bedroom. I told two or three friends about it and I guess it went from there. I’m sure loads of people think the songs suck.
You now perform as a three-piece. Is it a plan to take this to the studio/bedroom?
I’ve finished a bunch of songs on my own, but we’ve also been recording as a three-piece at Anupa’s flat above the Marathon in Chalk Farm. Strangely, despite being more collaborative, the music on this new record is more insular and personal than ‘Mountain Debris’.
Do you know when we might expect to see the new material?
About two thirds of the new album is recorded in some form so I hope it will be out before the end of the year. We’ve started to play a couple of the new tracks live. One is called ‘Dig Me Out’ and is probably the most straightforward ‘rock’ song we’ve ever done. Another is ‘I Know How Long She Haunts This Place’, which is a solo piano song on the album but we’ve rearranged it for the band to play live. I am actually writing the songs before I record them which is different to the last album, where the writing and recording process was intertwined. Distortion, reverb and delay are much less prominent factors on the newer songs. It’s way more of one mood than ‘Mountain Debris’, which was purposefully all-over-the-place stylistically.
How do you feel about the tag lo-fi ?
I guess it can bug me when people just throw the ‘lo-fi’ tag at my music because I try to reach so far beyond being a guitar band with catchy songs and crappy production. I have a huge record collection, listen to albums top-to-bottom and really explore them thoroughly, so that always informs the music I make. If people want to make conclusions about what genre we’re part of, that’s up to them, but I’d never appropriate the sound of a genre to fit in with a movement. Having said that there are days I think “I’m gonna rip off The Replacements”; that’s how ‘Sofia’ originated. I’m just not a good enough a musician to rip off anyone accurately, so it ends up sounding nothing like what I set out to copy.
It seems more recently that often the “lo-fi” artists can spend as much time mastering production techniques as those that use a professional studio.
I wouldn’t just limit it to lo-fi artists. Most people, regardless of genre, are recording at home as standard, learning how to make themselves sound good on the equipment they have. It’s just a different, perhaps more instinctive way of approaching production values, rather than applying certain rules that a professional studio engineer might implement as standard no matter what they are recording.
You seem to ride the boundaries of pop as well.
I have an obsession with the affective nature of melody. I am very limited as a musician and a singer, but I think if I have any talent, it lies in being able to create melodies which communicate what I am trying to say. Melody obviously isn’t necessary to every type of music, but in some ways even those artists who react against it are bound by their desire to be un-melodic, just as melody is the foremost vehicle of pop music. It’s a very powerful thing, and it’s something I love exploring with my music - certainly way more than exploring genres.
You’re stranded on a desert island (that has a record player) – what five records do you take with you?
This changes all the time, but right now it would be:
‘The Glow Pt. 2’ – The Microphones
‘The Disintergration Loops’ – William Basinski
‘Cryptograms’ – Deerhunter
‘The B.Coming’ – Beanie Sigel
‘Let It Be’ – The Replacements
You’re also allowed five essentials – what would you take?
I’m just going to presume this is the type of desert island that has electricity so I can take my Fender Jagstang, my laptop, a drum machine, MPC200XL, and a copy of ‘Role Models’ on DVD.
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