CREDIT: MOUNTAIN OF WOLVES
The London music scene has much to offer, and Mountain of Wolves' album Buried in the Morning satisfies rock, folk and country tastes.

Over the summer, Interrobang published an article about the top 10 London-based artists to check out. On that list was a fellow named Richard Gracious who released a sweet country/folk EP last year under his name.

This year Gracious has certainly been busy with his new project Mountain of Wolves, which just released its full album, Buried in the Morning in September. It features Gracious and his band mate Mark Kulmala trading off song-writing duties under a common name.

The record is a fantastic production, sure to please any fan from the country/folk/rock genres.

Through listening to the album, you will find that the two gifted writers waste no space on the record in filler material. This is seen in singer/songwriter circles where an album is released often containing some sub-par material that the artist doesn’t even pay attention to.

Those songs drag listeners away from the horrifyingly monotonous production and leave them to scrub their ears with soap until they can hit the stop button.

It’s refreshing to hear artists in this environment actually pay attention to their writing and focus on making a diverse yet cohesive-sounding album.

Buried in the Morning has an edge to it that makes it relevant to rock, folk and country fans alike where the songs themselves have just the right amounts of energy, hooks and creative lyrics respectively to leave them all happy and satisfied by the end of the final track “Reprise.”

The singers are distinct in sound, Gracious’ fluid and dynamic voice holds its forte in tracks like “Guts” and Kulmala’s modern country crooning is expressive in ones like “Mountain of Wolves,” which both collide into the fantastic collaborative effort that is this band.

The songs are best digested through a second or third listen.

Lots of songwriters can take note from this album and its attention to detail.

There is far too much staleness in these circles. Every songwriter can and does follow the basic chord progressions with slight modulation, which isn’t a bad thing, but there needs to be an effort placed into the content and attitude of the song in that case.

Traditional country and folk artists certainly did not avoid these basic structures and patterns but they are legendary for their unique emphasis on the song’s heart and soul being transmitted through their vocal style.

You feel the sadness in a moaning voice, you feel the rawness in a powerful one and you relate to those feelings by listening to those songs again and again without really knowing why. Conversely, there are many singer/songwriters who overthink these things by ruining their potentially great tracks with unnecessary instrumentation and giving off a try-hard vibe that becomes evident in the final product.

With Mountain of Wolves, you won’t find a try-hard attitude. You find a very honest one that is distinct in the singer-songwriter trope.

These writers are incredibly good at what they do and it doesn’t surprise that their collaboration has left them with a very pro sounding record.

Hopefully releases like this can signify a change in the bland factory pumped records that come out of every city, which somehow occasionally spark up on mainstream radio playlists.

It’s possible to make formulaic music without being perceived as vanilla but that is only possible if artists like Mountain of Wolves place its focus on creating records that bring its feelings and emotions to the forefront of your listening experience by achieving the right balance of a coherent style and diversity between the tracks.

You can listen to this record and purchase it at mountainofwolves.bandcamp.com