Mount Carmel is carved from the same natural forces M. Grig’s brothers-in-arm were birthed.
The album gets its name from a church not far from Grig’s childhood home. A student of ethnography, he’s constructed a new branch of its immersive technique: era ethnography. Mount Carmel is an album that presents a feeling in all of us that represents what is lost as we grow older. This phenomenon is hard to put into words that do it justice. You know the sensation when it overtakes you. This evocation is what Mount Carmel brings with each listen, which is why I must choose those moments carefully. Too much, and you begin to temper the effect.
I have spent the past 6 weeks carefully listening to Mount Carmel and even now, I feel at a loss for words. Between the gorgeous, but blurred visage of what I take to be the pastoral idealism on the album’s cover, to the careful balance Grig strikes with droning melodies crossing with the steely, prodding notes of his gentile strings, it’s still a lot to take in with each subsequent listen. But it does provide a sensation of complete and total relief. And that is the gift of Mount Carmel: the inner workings of Grig’s childhood euphoria which carries us to our own calming ports of call, detached from present realities, drenched in pleasant dualities. The hints of transplanted southern hospitality from Grig’s dobro, lap steel, and finger-picked guitar are warmer, sweeter, are less concerned about triumph of wills and more akin to finding peace among the ruin.
More about: M. Grig
