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Grandaddy

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Grandaddy

Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump 20th Anniversary Collection | UNCUT
 

Grandaddy

His falsetto as forlorn as Neil Young's, Jason Lytle emanates the wry pessimism of a guy who only sulks reluctantly into town when he needs new guitar strings. The band's first release was a self-released cassette from 1994 titled Complex Party Come Along Theories. Other than an EP in '96 (of mostly songs already released on the cassette) it wasn't until Under the Western Freeway that we got the proper debut album from these Modesto, California, indie rockers. Grandaddy's music is a hidden fortress of hot-wired Casios and antique drum machines, with an uneven acoustic strum at its foundation and dissonant guitar fragments looped around like chicken wire. The regrets yelped in lyrics like "Everything Beautiful Is Far Away" are both callow and moving, as if the feeble protests spray-painted on the Northern California overpasses of I-5 had been composed by the world's smartest teenage burnout. The Sophtware Slump could be America's answer- its halting, quizzical answer- to the sculpted crystalline grandeur and nail-biting technophobia of OK Computer. Make-do Yanks that they are, the Granddaddy boys employ shimmering synthetic surface to nearly conceal a rickety acoustic infrastructure, in contrast to the Brits' chilly precision. Creeping amid a "Broken Household Appliance National Forest," stranded on the moon and gazing earthward, eulogizing a paranoid android named Jed who drank himself to death, Lytle recognizes that the future has already come and gone here, leaving him to root among its detritus. As a reward for the many plaudits Sophtware Slump earned, the band saw some sketchy early material released by an old label. Some of the tunes are just fine, but the sonic support system that allows Grandaddy to thrive isn't yet in place. There's a lesson for arty pessimists in there: Fear the future all you like, it's the past that always turns to bite you in the ass. Sumday was more modest in its lethargic weary optimism. Lytle's structures were more conventional, resulting what sounds like a homemade, slacker E.L.O. The band would go on to release 2006's Just Like the Fambly Cat, a personal favorite of mine mainly because it was the first album they release after I had jumped on board as a fan. The band took a hiatus and returned with their last album: 2017's Last Place. Unfortunately, bassist Kevin Garcia passed away from a stroke that same year. Five albums, four E.P.'s, & one amazing band. Go listen to this amazing band and be a good laddie...

It's...

Grandady


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