The recording project of Los Angeles-based brothers Carson and Erik Lund, Mines Falls is the product of hard work, collaboration and a commitment to the surprising directions of experimentation. Released in 2018, their debut record Nepenthe was the first to emerge from the duo’s home studio, crafted in whatever free time life allowed. This personal, open-ended strategy is apparent on the album. For they were layered songs both complex and unexpected, relying on the slow processes of coincidence and intuition in a manner that traditional booked studio sessions just does not allow. Songs that came to possess the strange kind of logic that only trial, error and time can bring forth.
This autumn sees the release of a self-titled follow-up record that sees Mines Falls expand upon these foundations and challenge the possibilities of their style. Carson’s vocals still anchor the sound, and the piano still binds the various components into an emotive and haunting whole, but the layers are now more nuanced, more varied. Erik’s ongoing exploration of electronic programming proves the key evolution, providing the tools to add a contemporary unease and dread into the vivid sound, something which proves fitting considering the record’s scope. Because where Nepenthe‘s focus homed in on the personal, the new record widens its gaze and attempts to capture a picture of America—from the opioid crisis tearing across the Lunds’ home in New Hampshire to the climate breakdown ravaging their current state of residence.
The album’s second single, ‘Red Moon, Car Wreck’, is the perfect encapsulation of the new style. Immediately the glitching electronics are apparent, lending the sound an imperfect air, the creaks of a system under pressure, subject to distorting forces. But the emotional core of the Mines Fall sound remains, and it is a testament to the Lunds’ vision that none of the personal is lost within the new widescreen view. “I had been travelling quite a bit for my job when I wrote this song,” Carson explains, “touching on all corners of the country, finding myself in quiet towns I’d never heard of before, and not communicating with family and friends for long stretches. I crave this isolation and independence, but it also distances me from people.”
The result is an intimate communication arising from larger turmoil. One transmission among many, unique in its details but inherently familiar too. The attempt to draw a line between the past and present in the hope some answer or comfort might emerge. The sense that between who we were and who we went on to be lies an answer, an apology, an explanation. “Life is a series of comings and goings,” Lund continues, “but this song is about trying to stay in one place.”
Colour photo by Ori Gonzalez, B&W by Michael Basta