I've got this really bad habit; when I go into a record shop, and decide to buy something, I can never walk out with just one record. Has to be two at least, just in case the main selection is a dud. So I picked up the new DJ Shadow (which isn't bad, incidentally) a month ago, I did the usual scour of the racks to find something else vaguely interesting. 'Grandaddy!' I thought. 'I've heard interesting things about them, they've got beards or something', and so I ended up getting The Sophtware Slump. Which was indeed interesting.
So I get home and plonk on the DJ Shadow and play that through, interesting enough, then I put on this album, but my mind's elsewhere. "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot" tarts off interestingly enough I suppose, somewhat spacey yet pastoral, promising. Eight minutes later, it's still going! Not that I'm adverse to long songs, mind, but usually bands do that sort of thing at the end of albums, rather than the beginning. But I'm transfixed. "Hewlett's Daughter" wakes things up, seemingly starting off as some kind of love song, but the daughter is soon forgotten as Jason Lytle goes on about salvaging Dad Hewlett's guns. Yeah. But it's all good.
Thoughout the rest of the album, the themes of beaten up technology are pretty damned evocative. Take the sad account of the demise of "Jed the Humanoid", old junk in forest clearings in err, "Broken Home Appliance National Forest", or the homesick miner, perhaps exiled to the Jovian system or Titan or somewhere, looking for traces of his past in "Miner At The Dial-A-View". And correspondingly, the music which has good dashes of analog synths wheezing ghostly pads or arpeggios, along with more rockular grooves, such as on "Crystal Lake".
If it reminds you of Beck, particularly Mutations, they nod to that assertion by namedropping him in "Jed's Other Poem", but the tone isn't quite as peppy as Beck often gets. There's something quite profound going on here, and I do hear that the follow-up to this will be out before too long. I'm looking forward to that one.
See also:
- Split Enz, Time And Tide
- Beck, Mutations
- The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
It does have a kind of desolate feel doesn't it? I'd only really heard "The Crystal Lake" before I bought it (only very recently, like yourself) and it's not that typical of the whole album. It feels the most 'finished' of all the tracks since some of the others have just guitar and vocals or feature part of a demo. The whole 'lo-fi' effect makes it more personal which is what I think makes it get to you just a little bit more. Honesty cuts through bullshit and I think this album sounds like Jason Lytle being honest about disappointments and things going wrong.
It makes an interesting comparison with 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Monsters' by The Flaming Lips in the way they deal with some major themes. 'The Crystal Lake' has the great sentiment of Nature having a laugh at Man's general dumbness while FL's 'Do You Realise??' deals really starkly with mortality. By rights 'Yoshimi...' should be more depressing but is actually incredibly life-affirming while 'The Sophtware Slump' leaves you feeling more contemplative. It's maybe oversimplifying it to say Grandaddy sound like they're retreating from modern life while The Flaming Lips are embracing it but that's the impression I got from listening to them back-to-back.
Just so you know. Ta. Bye.
Yeah, I think I picked up _under the western freeway_ first, and was taken by surprise (such that I immediately went out in search of this album). If you want more comparisons, maybe chuck in Sparklehorse ? Also, they helped out with a few tracks on Howe Gelb (of Giant Sand)'s solo album from last year (I think they might've gigged with him a bit ?).