London-based musician Alex Shields launched A Grave with No Name as his personal musical project, drawing on the lo-fi indie style of 1990s acts such as Pavement and Sebadoh while aligning with the shoegaze resurgence of the late 2000s that also encompassed Banjo or Freakout, Atlas Sound, and Big Pink. The project’s title stemmed from an inside joke referencing the metalcore and emo band As I Lay Dying; Shields started the endeavor in 2006 and captured half of the 2009 debut full-length Mountain Debris inside a church in Stoke Newington, East London. After bringing bassist Tom King and guitarist Anupa Madawela into the lineup to expand the group’s woozy and ethereal pop approach, the resulting hazy, kaleidoscopic textures on the album evoked My Bloody Valentine, Guided by Voices, and the Microphones.
A Grave with No Name followed with the 2011 release Lower, an atmospheric set issued across two cassettes. The band entered a professional studio for the first time to create 2013’s Whirlpool and enlisted Echo Lake’s Linda Jarvis, Comanechi’s Akiko Matsuura, and Ides’ Alanna McArdle for contributions. That same year the group also made the Poltergeist album—built around tape loops, found sounds, and drum machines—available as a free download. Shields and his collaborators later teamed with Lambchop’s Mark Nevers at Beech House studio in Nashville to shape the polished, twangy 2015 album Feathers Wet, Under the Moon.
