There are probably a thousand fancy guitar-shaped platitudes you could string together to form a wreath to lay at the foot of this painfully grand departure. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Sometimes you have to grow farther apart to keep growing together. Yesterday brought the beginning, tomorrow brings the end but somewhere in the middle we’ve become the best of friends. Do not go gently into that good night. Personally I prefer a phrase my late Dad used to repeat at the conclusion of every meal: ‘Well if that’s it, we’ve had it’. ‘Parting shot’ would be too strong a word and ‘swan song’ would be just too chuffing tragic by half. Grandaddy, on the otherhand, cheerfully eject the disc from the drive, place it a nice clear jewel case and toss it to the wind. Afterall, who needs the disc, if you no longer have the drive?
Taking its cue from the best bits of previous albums, ‘Sumday’ (2003), ‘The Sophtware Slump’(2000), and ‘Under the Western Freeway’(1997) Grandaddy’s self-styled final album, ‘Just Like The Family Cat’ concludes their whimsical narrative of incongruence and isolation with the usual cast of characters: dogs, cats, digital technology, skateboarders, cars, dreamers, grass cutters, pilots, simpletons, over protective parents, an assortment of strays, vagrants, mystics, dyslexics, trailer-parkers, travellers, tweakers, cheap shots, slack-jawed children and sewage treatment facilities. It’s still a lightly psychedelic space-rock ride through Grandaddy’s slacker cosmos, but this time it’s performed with an urgency and a dynamism only hinted at on previous albums. Sure it begins with the usual elegance and innocence characteristic of a Grandaddy record – the poignant request for clarification from the child on ‘What Happened…’ – but in less time than it takes to cry ‘release’, the record is whipped furiously into gear by the deeply revving engine of ‘Jeez Louise’ – a growling, snarling 24-carat, rough-cut pop-diamond, light on the handbrake and full on the throttle. Here is a man with his foot hovering anxiously on the accelerator, waiting none too patiently for the kids to collect their cargo of cuddlies, the wife to gather her toiletries and the dreamer to amass their dreams before rolling the gear out of neutral and hitting the highway before sunrise. An experience that’s part relief, part trepidation and part elation, tracks like ‘Summer…It’s Gone’ provide prelude to a road-movie trailed by voices, plagued by doubts, passed by seasons and punctuated only by the most beautiful of sunsets. It’s ‘Wake Up Boo’ without the amphetamines, ‘Seasons In The Sun’ with only half a tank of misery. ‘Jump’ without the spandex. It’s also very ambiguous. Are those whale noises we hear on ‘Animal World’ or the whistle of a jet-engine on take-off? The context of Lytle’s relocation from Modesto to Montana, from life spent touring to having unrestricted access to the biggest of skies amongst all manner of beasties and critters suggests it could be both. On the evidence of tracks like ‘Where I’m Anymore’ it’s an album about checking one’s coordinates or setting one’s compass before commencing the second leg of the journey out of one’s comfort zone; afterall, you only know where you’re going if you first know where you’ve been.
The Grandaddy brief was always pretty simple: gentle illustrations of life in the semi-rural suburbs of California as told and mispelled by estranged androids, holidaying Martians and hopeless dreamers thrown into relief by sunny Beach-Boy harmonies, skewed electronic devices, and the prettiest of guitar licks. And the brief is again quite beautifully realised.
It’s often said that life is brought more sharply into focus by death. The colours here are brighter, the shapes more clearly defined and the weak, delightful whispers have swelled to a rapturous roar. It’s a perfect distillation of every Grandaddy joy you have ever experienced. Don’t mourn the passing, celebrate the life…
In loving memory of Grandaddy, 1992-2006.