nside the post 9/11 greenhouse a sense of nostalgia pervades some of America's most novel and profound artistic pursuits. Whether it be through the new wave of American folk, clothed in the pacifist strains of generations prior (the lite-paganism and Eastern philosophy seemingly discarded in favor of a more local inheritance), or the cynical and coarse reality of a television series like Deadwood, there is a desire to retrace our steps towards the things that either exploit the discussion or help us to communicate and piece together the fractured spirituality of whatever it was this land was intended for.

Whatever the cause of this most recent re-acquaintance with the country's expansion and ancestral movements, Denver Colorado's Across Tundras, possess only a small genealogy of ideas on the subject. Borrowing its aesthetic wholesale from Dylan Carlson's seminal band Earth, Dark Songs of the Prairie (the title sounds like a TIME anthology) promotes itself as "Rustic Americana" but emotes the mysteries of land and culture with the artistic sense of a virgin child.

Where Earth rendered myth in the abstract, Across Tundras now attempt to piece together the bygone years through music, lyrical pastiche, and archived photography. With contrasts of plow and mountain trails and attention given to the group's native state of South Dakota, Dark Songs… decorates in both the harsh and pastoral element, but offers little beyond these superficial shades.

You can just about picture the red-spandex clad PR demon materializing atop your shoulder: "It's almost like hearing some mysterious 70's country rock outfit thawed out and refitted with…shoegazey shimmer…a tangential line from Neil Young to Neurosis…come…play with us, Danny!" Some will dutifully comply. What occurs here is a roundabout—about four minutes of Crazy Horse followed by two-three more minutes of heavier melodic stomp to conclude; a tedious adventure through the well worn-hum of alternative metal / country rock.

The main obstacle while enduring Across Tundras is the way tracks are stitched to form various odes to Young and Kevin Shields; wedding bubbling low-bellowed trills to pretty shards of white-wintered indie-rock. There is a feeling of passage, a touch of open air due in part to Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer) and his surrounding, reverb laced production but it never truly breathes. Songs remain bland as they travel with no imagination in transition or timing. (Only the gentle resonance of "Ode to George Parts 1 & 2" finds some equivalence to Earth's Hex, which the general design of the record blatantly allies itself.)

Eventually these drawn out expositions lose touch with the theme completely and circle in slim husks, a narrative that isn't—in multiple senses. Wincing patois like, "Silver lining doesn't sell to a man in a broken shell" and folksy admissions such as "I never learned to smile 'cus I never learned how to cry" are spread throughout the booklet but kept unintelligible by Hull's production. That's fine. I demand some blood in my history and here's none to be found.

Two Nineteenth century American songs, "The Old Sexton" and "Aura Lea," also appear, though in much different arrangements. Written by Park Benjamin in the 1841, The Old Sexton expounds joyfully on the task of an old burial attendant, "King of the dead," a gravedigger who reaps his bounty, year after year. The chilling, almost mystical recitation of, "I gather them in, I gather them in," marks the piece as a grand declaration of mortality. Clumsily acted out through acoustic guitar and forced drawl, male and female voices tumble over one another in a freak-folk choir with electric guitars that routinely bend and stretch across the entire track. Credit them for reprinting it and nothing more. "Aura Lea," maid of golden hair, once set to the tune of what would later become "Love Me Tender," is given much the same treatment, a memory resurrected without enhancing its point. Call it grave robbing then, as Across Tundras exits with their bounty of fool's gold.