Nai Harvest – Hold Open My Head

Nai Harvest can be likened to something of a grunge-meets-modern-indie combo.  The Sheffield duo’s songs are coated in a filmy haze with a dissociative grumble that makes vocalist Ben Thompson sound as if he’s speaking from the throat with minimal mouth movement.  The washed out cover art framing their latest EP, Hold Open My Head, mirrors the four song disc’s sleepy, shoegaze feel and generally makes for somewhat of an inconsequential and at worst boring listen.

What it boils down to is the EP’s lack of a sense of discovery.  One listen to opener “Rush” and listeners won’t have much more to look forward to.  The slow turn of rumbling riffs and Thompson’s monotone groan are discouraging enough, but add in downright depressing lyrics like the choral exit, “kill my heart kill my head, I’ll be here lying in bed, everything I know is dead,” and you’d find more rays of sunlight combing through back catalogues of the darkest late 90’s emo bands.  Follow that up with the title track’s disappointing mid-song attempt to jumpstart Hold Open My Head with some heightened riffs and the album’s limited tempo makes its stranglehold on creativity and atmosphere known.  It isn’t until the final minute and a half leading up to the closing moments of “I Don’t Even Know” that Nai Harvest sonically ventures from its comfort zone and Thompson lets out his first genuinely emotional scream and captures a hint of the album’s overall angst.

On a playlist of back-to-back albums, Nai Harvest’s four song EP plays like a forgettable intermission.  While it stays true to the dampened delivery of hazy 90’s shoegaze, it’s just not interesting.  None of the songs are particularly offensive, but each one blends facelessly into the next.  Had the EP been mapped as a full-length album it would beg the question what else could have been added under the present format.  Nai Harvest needs to find a reason for listeners to stay tuned because Hold Open My Head just doesn’t cut it.