Grice returns with his fifth studio album, Mordant Lake, and immediately reading the man’s description, 'a dream of colours and canyons, a ghost dance from the edge of the mountain’, you know you are in for a treat.

The eponymous location is a fictional one captured through a kinetoscope and inhabited by a lost tribe of songs, a place to heal the broken wings and hide the broken things. The album is dedicated to all forcibly displaced tribes and who remain stateless. Such sentiments are not, incidentally, purely historical ones, but, scandalously, a living reality for so many humans. Witness the massive refugee camps across the Middle East where innocent victims of oppression and war live in conditions which are beyond the stuff of the worst of nightmares, states across the world equally culpable in this depravity.

Before I discuss this album, readers unfamiliar with this artist’s work should definitely look at my review of 2022’s Polarchoral, a stunning achievement which is still regularly played here on the Lazland decks – simply click on the button below.

Grice is the vocalist, and plays electric & acoustic guitar, harmonica, tzouras, mellotron, Moog, keys, and percussion; Robert Brian is on drums; Al Swainger plays bass; B J Cole is on pedal steel guitar; and Jim Iz provides vocal harmonies on ‘Silent Thunder’ (reprise).

So, eight brand new pieces for us to discuss on a full, rich album which delights with each concentrated listen.

First up, we have the title track. There is a sense of pure mystery on this, the percussion especially providing us with that sense of a special place shrouded in myth, the guitars dripping with Americana sensibilities. The vocals are expressive in their fragility, the closing words bleakly anthemic with the broken world we inhabit brought together at the edge of the mountain and the crimson water. A beautiful start to proceedings.

Offer You features some sterling work by Cole on the pedal steel guitar on a song which talks to me of self-deprecation, with the subject unsure what he has to offer the object of his attention, and I know these are sentiments I and many readers of this review will recognise in ourselves. The music, however, is far brighter than this description might suggest, mixing several styles, with more country-soaked Americana combined with some fantastic Moog and other key work reminding one of classic art rock days of yore, the vocal harmonies produced by Grice rising above it all, the whole piece bouncing along at a fair old pace before the waters of the lake at the end wash over us signalling release.

Karl has been released as a video, and I have embedded it below. It featured on my monthly “Ruminations” video in June, and is a loving tribute to the late, great Karl Wallinger (World Party, The Waterboys). Now this warm tribute above everything else puts paid to the fiction that art rockers are somehow a different type of human, a weird sort intellectually superior, but emotionally unable to mix with the rest of us mere mortals, because I think you will agree with me that this track simply drips with affection, humanity, and, above all, respect for the subject. A strong contender for “track of the year” on my website’s annual awards, sit back, close your eyes, and let the words and wistful music wash over you. I think the rhythm section of Swainger & Brian shine on this. Incidentally, I have been listening to quite a bit of World Party since first hearing this track, and Karl most certainly does get you.

Ghost Dance (shed my skin) follows this wonder. There is a strong and urgent groove on this one, with some interesting hints of electronica contained within the main theme, a loop where the vocals plaintively wonder what went wrong and urge the subject to turn himself around and bang a different drum, the guitar work on this, both acoustic and electric, very strong before the Moog enters proceedings in a manner Wakeman himself would be very pleased with, a mournful mellotron adding to the atmosphere in the background and a very nice bass melody at the close of the piece.

How Long is simply a love song, that sense of loss being separated from the love of your life, and yearning for the time you are together again. Once again, the key to this is the inherent fragility in Grice’s voice exuding emotional power that takes the listener by the hand and leads him to that satisfying place of immersion. There are some very good guitar riffs in the mix on this one. The final vocal-free forty seconds have a complete change of direction, enabling us to perhaps visualise that joining together.

Voices has a distinctive classic psych rock vibe, those swirling keys and guitar riffs, the lyrics continually asking what those voices in his head have done to him. I close my eyes listening to this and envisage that lake on the edge of the foot of the mountain, the lost voices gathering and communicating. The vocal harmonies here are striking, before Grice changes the mood somewhat by his distorted voice shouting out the question, the riffs more powerful, and an anger at the continued intrusion, a distinct element of chaos at the denouement. Powerful and striking, it is embedded below.

Silent Thunder (Reprise) is the penultimate offering. It is the longest track at over nine and a half minutes. The start is infused with the spirit of the 60’s culture, the summer of love and Aquarius, and what hits you is the vocal harmonies with Iz, with sounds like thunder all around the listener, the voices making themselves heard in a track which I think contains within it more than a passing tribute to CSNY and is infused with the voices of those displaced. The closing passage brings together all that is good about the album, the pedal steel guitar particularly prominent.

We close with End of the Mountain, and this is embedded below for you. The understated guitar work here is beautiful, a track which brings you down very gently from what preceded it and crucially allows you space to consider this world of ours and the hurt we inflict, but in the context of gorgeous music, thus providing the paradox that we really can be so creative and kind.

That is the album and my thoughts. I will close by saying this. I think that Mordant Lake is an exceptional work, but that, as with Polarchoral which came before, I will look back on this review and say, Steve, you really only scratched the surface of this with your words, because there is such a depth and wonders to be discovered, impossible to describe and put over after a couple of weeks listening, because each visit uncovers something new, a note here, a word there, and intent everywhere.

Grice is one of those special artists who craft their work infused with passion, and this comes very highly recommended. Take yourself along to https://hungersleeprecords.bandcamp.com/album/mordant-lake