It’s almost always the case that those records you love the most often yield the least words. What makes it even worse is when you have such celebrated alternatives as Grandaddy offer up an album that seems every bit as good as their previous without it ever really challenging the fragile – and often magical – base upon which that album stands.
At a point where any other band thesedays would flout the standard set by their previous release by flouting the very rulebook they has themselves created (Radiohead, Blur, Goldfrapp, Flaming Lips) Grandaddy choose to hone and perfect the indisputably perfect pop of ‘Hewlett’s Daughter’ and ‘The Crystal Lake’ with shiny new single ‘Now It’s On’ and the irrepressible pop clockwork of ‘Stray Dog and The Chocolate Shake’ – a song memorable if only for it’s classic and iconic references to ‘magic hair’ and the utterly charming but bizarre trick on the stray dog story. Stray what story? Don’t ask…
The computer theme is still very much in evidence – a direct rebuttal one might wish to the thankless anti-success of drop out albums like Kid A, and Amnesiac – and in some ways it seems more expertly handled than its predecessor, relying less on literal PC metaphor than on the wiry, extraneous buzzes and hums of the music: Grandaddy’s modem music – the faint static charges of Jason Lytles’ brittle vocals, the whirring algorithms of the bare and analogue synthesizers to the fizzing pulse of the percussion. In fact, if anything segues this album with the last, it’s not the obvious total recall of opening tracks, ‘Now It’s On’ and ‘I’m On Standby’ – but more the slow residual energy of closing track, ‘The Final Push To The Sun’ and the swirling pop whimsy of ‘The Group Who Couldn’t Say’. And I defy anyone to suggest that anybody does narrative better than this boy – managing as he does to squeeze out of the most ordinary and unlikely sources (a dragon click, I ask you) something totally surprising and profound. Forrest Gump? Well kind of. If it wasn’t for the gentle grace of standout track, ‘Saddest Vacant Lot in All The World’ you’d imagine these boys were stumbling upon rather than embracing greatness.
It’s weird, it’s esoteric and it’s confusingly but wonderfully childlike. It’s Grandaddy and they’re back amoungst us. Enjoy it while it lasts.