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Grandaddy: Sumday
People hate beards. This is proven thus: Which is the better Beatles record? ‘Let It Be’ where they have big ugly hippy-face huggers, or any of the others with their cool designs, pretty colours and sexy SMOOTH faces? Exactly. You wouldn’t want to shag InMe if they didn’t look like a bunch of hairless, innocent, prepubescent fucks, and people like The Coopers and Dandy Warhols wouldn’t have half their appeal is they weren’t BEARDLESS. Facial hair implies oldness and sexlessness, and in extreme cases it means you’re a smelly box-dwelling type that goes near children. R. Kelly still has a beard doesn’t he? (Though he has a luxury box, made of corrugated card.) That grumpy cunt from Weezer: do you seriously prefer him in a beard? No, of course not.
There’s only two people in music who could possibly sell more records by showing a beard in public, and they’re Kylie and Avril. Grandaddy however, couldn’t care less. After all, what do three bearded techno-geeks from California know about the fashion of music?
Although their first album ‘Under The Western Freeway’ managed to go pretty much unnoticed, their 2000 LP ‘The Sophtware Slump’ embraced the alternative scene with its curiously romantic and touchingly beautiful tales of robot alcoholism, dysfunctional decay and digital loneliness. Light retro-electro-pop, touched by the weirdness of Bowie, melded with country blues and the same strange perfection as Sparklehorse. It delved with chart success on tracks like ‘Crystal Lake’, occasionally making you dance, but mostly it made you cry.
More than that though, Grandaddy’s emotional pull was as powerful as anything Neil Young did circa ‘After The Goldrush’ and was certainly a blissfully fresh and summery sound. The pop tunes like ‘Hewlitt’s Daughter’ passed you by for the divinely melancholic stuff like ‘…Dial A View’ and we could almost taste the rust of our metal future. Grandaddy however, are no longer 'weathered and withery’ and expectation alone isn’t enough to fuel a classic follow up.
Y’see, ‘Sumday’ is all about 'busting the lock off the front door' (new single ‘Now It’s On’), cracking open the shell of solitude and going trekking in the sun. At its best, it’s like walking on a beach eating an everlasting packet of cold Skittles, but mostly the record meanders around the same beats, same chord patterns and without a lot of the touching nuances which we grew to love them for. The lazy, hazy acoustics of ‘I’m On Standby’ just underwhelm. The band have moved on to a slightly more guitar based sound, but forgotten to take the killer tunes.
Do-it-all frontman/singer Jason Lytle still possesses that achingly lovely falsetto, and typically, Grandaddy conjure up sumptuous Beach Boys-esque harmonies all the way through, but with the songs falling away from their trademark electronic weirdness, tracks like 'The Go In The Go-For-It’ are sparse and uninteresting. Things pick up as they make a quick dash for the radio playlists with ‘El Caminos In The West’; a more upbeat, Weezer style ‘doo doo doo’ affair, but this doesn’t hold.
Previously, like Sparklehorse, Grandaddy’s strange and wonderful stories would engross you and their oft-tragic endings would batter your heart, but there’s none of this here. Instead, they repeat the same rolling acoustic backing on too many songs, and even the whispering looseness of ‘Lost On Yer Merry Way’ lacks enough lyrical interest for you to really care. ‘I wanna get back home…’ Yadda, yadda, yadda…
The closest they come to real heartbreak is on ‘Saddest Vacant Lot In All The World’ a Beatles-y piano ballad with the mercurial line ‘He’s so drunk he’s passed out in a Datsun/It’s parked in the hot sun’ but there’s nothing to make you really give a flying fuck about these ‘human’ characters. ‘Bring back the robots!’ we yell, and briefly, on ‘Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake’ we get our wish, but there’s no chorus and the song is so shamefully devoid of sparkle you really wanna just cry about it. I’d love to tell you this is the record that’s gonna make your summer, but alas, it isn’t. ‘Sumday’ doesn’t engage beyond the first few listens, and as pleasant as it is; it’s rarely anything more.
With all the patience that such glorious facial hair commands (and given the fact that we’ve waited three fucking years), Grandaddy could have done a lot better. They shouldn’t be surprised if we all start to emulate Richey Manic and take to using razorblades. Fucking beards.
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Grandaddy - Sumday
Brian Wilson had a fucking cool beard when recording his best stuff. So that's your theory fucked then.....-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
Well I guess it depends what you class as 'best stuff'. Check your copy of Pet Sounds.-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
Read my other reply. I'm wrong. I admit it and i can't even correct myself in the right place.....HELP!-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
aereogramme have fuck-off beards.
gord bless aereogramme and all who sail in 'em.
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Grandaddy - Sumday
No, wait he didn't did he? Just checked the cover of Pet Sounds. Sorry, i'm tired..... -
Grandaddy - Sumday
A terrible terrible review. How pathetic to still be barking on about Grandaddy's beards? Their beards are totally irrelevant. The writer tells us nothing about the music at all, and appears to have completely misunderstood the lyrics.
Please check out the vastly superior review at www.dosomethingpretty.com in the articles section.-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
It's about adding a bit of context and humour to something to make people wanna read it. If you bother to read the review, you'll see there's plenty in reference to the music. It doesn't dissect every track, because it doesn't need to.
Here, below, for everyone is this bloke's 2,700 word (that's right 2,700 word) review.
Tell me which one is easier and more interesting to read.
In early interviews, Grandaddy's Jason Lytle referred to his home town of Modesto as a "shithole for live music" and as a city of "small town attitudes, a slowly creeping plague of urban problems, drugs, gang violence, apathy and crappy mini-malls." His band's magnificent debut album, Under the Western Freeway, was immersed in this loyal, but bitter, regionalism. The listener was offered indigenous West Coast pop music made by men with large beards - the buzzes, hisses, uninvited bleeps, and hollow echoes from the flat farmlands of California's Central Valley, the hot sun and the cold beer and them goddamn insects, unscathed by nearby San Francisco's urban hipster cool. The Sophtware Slump, Grandaddy's second album, was presented as a concept record about a world drowning in broken technology. But the concept appeared slightly forced and a little uninspired compared to their non-conceptual debut record, influenced by everyday mundane life in their shithole hometown. The Sophtware Slump's stories of dystopian communities, disfigured landscapes and alcoholic robots were not as engaging and imaginative as the previous record's otherworldly tales of ordinary life.
So I approach Sumday, the band's first album in three years, with some trepidation. Despite its brilliance, a remake of Under the Western Freeway would be regressive. They have earned international acclaim, toured the world, become better musicians, and now have access to a considerably larger budget to spend on production facilities. An album more varied, consistent, challenging and inspiring than The Sophtware Slump was essential.
Opener Now It's On begins with casual whistling, eerie sighs, demented piano and a broken machine repeatedly clicking and farting, finally generating a stirring pop anthem. The verses hurriedly chug and sparkle, and the chorus hides electric shocks in its seams. In spite of the upbeat and positive music, it quickly becomes evident that singer/songwriter Jason Lytle has been having some problems. Musically, Now It's On is situated perfectly, at the front of the record. The previous two records began quietly and slowly, but this bursts into life after eight seconds and grabs the listener's attention almost immediately. Lyrically and thematically, Now It's On is oddly placed. After a few careful listens to the rest of the record it becomes clear that this is Lytle's rehabilitation song.
"Bust the lock off the front door. Once you're outside, you won't want to hide anymore. Light the light on the front porch. Once it's on you'll never want to turn it off anymore."
This song is about a re-energised and reformed rock star, ready to confront the rest of his life. The "season of the old me" that he repeatedly sings about in this song, we discover later, refer to his feelings of decay and depression, a period in which Lytle was in a cold, dark and lonely place. The chorus in Now It's On could easily be Lytle's personal mantra. It feels as though the plot has been reversed - a happy beginning rather than a happy ending. Had this song closed the record, although it would have been questionable musically, it would have represented a
light at the end of a tunnel.
In I'm On Standby, Lytle himself is now a broken appliance (there's no need for Jed the robot anymore), plagued by doubt and indecision, pulling himself apart, facing meltdown, and waiting patiently to be serviced.
"Bye, bye. I'm on standby. Out of order, and sort of unaligned, power down for redesign."
It's vintage Grandaddy: simple strummed guitar, harmonic echoes and spaceship sound effects, and bearing a little semblance to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi record. In the chronological order of things, I'm On Standby surely should come before Now It's On. This is the pre-surgery record, the final moments before rehabilitation, but Lytle is not ready to be turned on just yet.
In The Go In The Go-For-It, bible-belt Modesto makes a return to the fore. Lytle complains of the "talk of God so loud", and the narrow-minded local voices trying to "wreck his head". From personal experience I can report that Modesto is an overheated, poorly-planned sprawl, polluted by warehouse-sized evangelical churches (with giant parking lots so that they can get mistaken for discount supermarkets). Yet the city is only a short commute from the magnificent Yosemite national park, and to the west, the blue Pacific. Modesto may well be one of the more boring cities in America, but unlike in Under the Western Freeway, it isn't obvious here that Lytle is blaming his hometown for his condition. Perhaps he is ridiculing the idea that religion could be the answer to his problems. Again, this song is about dejection and stagnation, but Lytle's search for the cure is going nowhere, and like the film Memento, Sumday appears to be being played in reverse order. The track sounds like a companion piece to their underrated B-side Our Dying Brains; disillusionment and despair as days get eaten up too quickly in downtown Modesto, as blundering keyboards clank and chime with effortless finesse.
The Group Who Couldn't Say features more quintessential Grandaddy topics - pretty insects, trips to the countryside, and technological progress halted by human laziness, but the most striking lyrics again highlight Lytle's insecurities and concerns, as he is kept awake by the noisy Modesto night.
"And the sprinklers that come on at 3am, sound like crowds of people asking 'are you happy what you're doing?'"
Upon oscillating layers of warm hum, whistles, booms and clicks are liberally cast, and at the track's conclusion, the addled, twisted, serpentine notes and comforting harmonies are reminiscent of the instrumental choruses in Under the Western Freeway's Everything Beautiful is Far Away.
At over six minutes long, Lost On Yer Merry Way is the album's centrepiece. Laughing Stock performed the counterweight function on Under the Western Freeway, separating the tight, poppy first half of the record from the fragmented and confused second half, whereas The Sophtware Slump lacked a strongman in the midfield; its centrepiece was the first song. The climax of Lost On Yer Merry Way is astonishing. The band start to rock, with disconcerting time signatures, and a suffocating lead vocal, buried deep into the action, screams (I think) "it's hard to keep your head on!" Lytle's voice gets wilder and increasingly desperate until the song fades out spectacularly. Few bands put as much attention into their fade-outs as Grandaddy. On this track, as the sound rapidly shrinks into silence, for a tiny moment everything goes mad. It sounds as though the fade out itself has been cut-up and remixed; or perhaps drummer Aaron Burtch had a minor heart attack towards the completion of the song. Either way, this tiny spastic drumbeat kicks in; guitarist Jim Fairchild leaps into a little solo, and in the background the sound of somebody dialling up to the Internet, perhaps.
"All that I'm asking tonight, is that I make it back home alive. No explosions, no crashes, no fights. I wanna get back home."
Lytle's craving to get back home, taken literally, left my girlfriend, a Modesto native, shaking her head in disbelief. But the 'home' Lytle refers to is more likely to be a non-specific 'comfortable place', where he is relieved of his troubles and pains. At this stage in the record, however, the cause of Lytle's problems is still open to speculation.
El Camino's In The West is arguably the standout song on the record, and if there's any justice, will be this year's feel good hit of the summer (ignoring the disturbing undertones). It's the sweetest, poppiest, most addictive song here, with great hooks and luscious harmonies; a certain single. On the surface this appears to be a love song to California – El Camino's are clanky, long Chevy automobiles from the seventies still much loved in central California. But Lytle's lyrics once again suggest personal problems.
If the song is simply about homesickness, perhaps he struggled to deal with the extensive touring of the Sophtware Slump and longs for the calm of his familiar environment; "The Pacific will pacify us when we're done." I recall that in interviews for the UK music press at the time of the release of Under The Western Freeway, Lytle told journalists that being in a band rescued him from an mundane and meaningless existence, further spells in prison and from problems with alcohol. Perhaps Lytle has possibly found Grandaddy's success a little overwhelming and that he longs for the simple life, skateboarding, making music, having fun, at home in Modesto.
In El Camino's chorus Lytle longingly refers to his "simple wish for peace of mind and happiness." And the verses are also negative - paranoia, depression, madness...
"Here comes the chaos, perfectly on time again. Is it ever going to end?"
Along with: "Demolition still can be a lot of fun. Someone should tell me that I'm done. I feel so far away from home...” But yet the music sounds so thrillingly positive and happy.
Yeah Is What We Had is mellow and warm, with synthesised strings of orchestra real dazzling our enraptured ears. This is followed by the joker in the pack, Saddest Vacant Parking Lot In All The World. Its constituency is completely different from the other tracks on the record. The piano takes over as the main instrument, accompanying Lytle's shakily sung third-person narratives about love and loss. It is unclear whether Lytle is living vicariously through these lonely individuals, but amongst all the sad songs on the record, its one of the few that actually sound sad; a cousin of the Sophtware Slump's Underneath the Weeping Willow. The song is marvellously produced. As the sonically sparse opening verses develop into something fuller and heavier, Lytle's voice becomes increasingly lonely itself, echoing the plight of his characters, engulfed in the right speaker, threatening to capsize amongst the oceanic group vocal.
With Burtsh's drumming sounding fully automatic, a jotting bass line, and an idiotic but ingenious melody, Stray Dog and the Chocolate Shake sounds a little like one of Stephen Merritt's DIY pop-moments. It's packed with special effects, flashy drum rolls, and crazed shouting, and features plenty of trivial observations about everyday life in the Valley; "there's a high school football coach sitting on the coach, with a toothpick in his mouth." There's apparently nothing in this song that refers to Lytle's unhappiness or unease, perhaps Lytle is okay when at home in Modesto. The entertaining lyrics and unconventional song structure make the track stand out.
Lytle addresses his problems most explicitly in OK With My Decay, although with lyrics such as "I'm Ok, with my decay, I have no choice, so I rejoice", one gets the feeling that he's laughing at himself. After referring to "the pressure put upon" him, that which is trying to "break him down", Lytle reassures the listener that he has come to terms with his own deterioration. Musically, this is one of the strongest on the album, with lots of static fizzing, barely-there backing vocals, and an unexpected psychedelic nursery-rhyme interlude. The song ends with Lytle singing "I'm Ok" over and over again, although having listened to the first seven songs on the record, it’s a little hard to believe him. His declarations of well being are promoted by subliminal hints of lounge-bar piano and strangulated keyboard trumpets. It almost sounds as though Grandaddy are on the verge of celebration.
In the penultimate song, The Warming Sun, Lytle finally reveals what must surely be the primary cause of his depression - a broken heart.
"In a dream, you were sitting there waiting by the door for me, and I got the opportunity to experience the experience once again; of how it could have maybe been?"
These are certainly Lytle's most personal lyrics to date. He's written love songs before of course; AM180 was the perfect Modesto love song, "we'll defuse bombs, walk marathons, and take on whatever, together", but this appears to be the first time he's written about losing a woman. "But in real life. You're in another world, and with another guy." Lytle is jealous, and very insecure about his own inadequacies, "and all that stuff I didn't get, comes so easy to him, he doesn't even have to try."
In those early music press interviews from 1997 and '98, Lytle stressed his fears that he is too simple, too unworldly, to tour the planet and be given a public voice. He still appears have difficulties dealing with life's complications. Tellingly, in an On The Coach interview with the NME in early 2000, Lytle states that his most treasured possession is his "naivety". His insecurity has certainly triggered some wonderful lyrics: "Do as I didn't do, because I'm a picture of imdumbivity" (from Laughing Stock – oh how I miss those lovely invented words!) In the same NME interview, Lytle is asked, "What is heaven?" He replies, "Heaven is lying in the sun with the one I love." In The Warming Sun, whilst merry-go-rounds of confetti piano plummet around him, Lytle confesses, "I wish I really could enjoy the warming sun, enjoy a warm someone, and I need to hide, way alone inside." How could anybody not feel desperately sad for him?
The record ends with one of the prettiest songs the band has ever performed. Over clapping cymbals and ballroom organs Jason and his echo duet and despair over heartbreak and confusion. Again he sings of his lost love.
"Every now and then, the memories creep in, of breezing blue skies, with trees, and you, and I. But that old life is gone, I guess that I've moved on."
And so to the album's title, Sumday. The 'sun' of the Sunday has disappeared, and has been replaced by the dark and lonely indoors. He is haunted by the happy memories of past days with his woman in the sun. In El Camino's In The West, when Lytle sings, "there's my baby, laughing at me in the sun, maybe I'm the weaker one, I'm so far away from home...", perhaps 'home' is not necessarily Modesto, or even a comfortable place, but reality. Perhaps "the chaos" he mentions in the following verse refers to these damaging flashbacks to happier times.
"Almost everything I see becomes a blur to me. I'm wasted because the fast pace is too much. Here at the final push to the sum. If my old life is done, then what have I become?"
Sumday. The sum. The completion of things and the totality of things. The end of the week, but also the end of Lytle's old life, and potentially, according to Jim Fairchild's interview with a Colorado newspaper reporter last month, the end of Grandaddy.
""I have no idea," Fairchild admits. "Four months ago, I thought for sure this was our last record... Now, I don't know." He also reveals that the band spent "eight or nine months trying to figure out if we even wanted to make another record again." In addition, Lytle recently told Bang! magazine, "This is the album we've been aiming towards. Everything we've ever done has led up to this... in my mind this is it." Will this be the last Grandaddy record? Is Jason Lytle not only exorcising his own demons, but also finishing his band? As The Final Push To The Sum trickles delicately to conclusion, and a late, fantastic, final burst of energy is snuffed in its infancy, Lytle issues the instruction, "Start to fade right here."
The song, and the album, simply fade away. There are no grand finales, just Lytle singing, "what have I become" repeatedly. It is the end of a magnificent record. Musically, Sumday is a joy. The instrumental segments in-between songs are eccentric and esoteric, leagues above the unnecessary E. Kneivel Interlude on the Sophtware Slump. Each one of the twelve songs is hopelessly catchy, with the Grandaddy machine proving that it is far greater than the Sum of the parts. Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.
And lyrically, it is their strongest record to date. I have my fingers crossed that Lytle will soon find love and happiness and find the strength to write another brilliant album. He and his band mates have a genius knack for making pop music, and the rock world would be a lot less interesting without them. And I do believe that he'll be okay. When asked, in the same NME interview, what he believed was his greatest strength, Lytle replied, "Endurance. In all ways.
Yeah, I'm good at keeping going."-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
That one was slightly less easy to read just because of the length but a lot more interesting because there was much of intererst there, the one on here was fair enough though I guess, I didn't think anything looked really wrong even if I might end up disagreeing and it got an opinion across ok.
And they both mentioned the beards!
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Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
I'm getting really pissed off with this at the moment. There seem to be a bunch of people who come on here purely to slag off the reviews. What's the fucking point? What are you gaining from it other than some misplaced sense of self-importance? The reviewer listened to the record and wrote a review which put the record into context with their previous, excellent album. He told me that lyrically and musically it was less interesting than 'Sophtware...'. I'm hoping he's wrong but he's put into words how he feels about the record. And that's fine.
As for 'barking on about the beards', he's just illustrated how out of step with the majority of current bands Grandaddy are. Good point, well made.
Sorry, had to vent spleen there.-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
I'm getting really pissed off with this at the moment. There seem to be a bunch of people who come on here purely to slag off the reviews. What's the fucking point?
We're getting sick of it too. Why don't people start being more positive or go write their own alternative reviews, rather than bickering? negative people suckass.
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Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
Its a funny, good review that says all you need to know.
Much better than that essay you did. Who really wants to spend a hour reading a dull boring review anyway?-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
This album is as good as the one before it.
Here's my review.
Grandaddy - Sumday
Sumday could be compared to Mercury Rev's last offering, in as much as its virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor. It isn't hard to imagine the band plucking through their facial hair in desperation to choose a title that wasn't 'The Sophtware Slump II'.
Not that anyone could complain with the collection of material that they had to put a title to, as its a sterling piece of work that matches the Sophtware Slump step for step. It opens well, with 'Now it's on' marrying neo-Status Quo chugging to ELO keyboard flourishes in the chapel of radio friendly American indie.
'I'm on standby' is the second punch in the opening one-two combo, bringing back the themes of alienated nature and humanized technology that were so prevalent in Grandaddy's previous work (Here the lyric "You humans require more words" spoken by a machine awaiting redesign is sci-fi familar). On 'Sumday' these themes seem slightly more than a lyrical leit-motif, no longer the subject of the songs, but a means to help deliver the messages behind them. 'The group who couldn't say' is a gentle poke of fun at chart bands (themselves part of the machinery of commerce, 'unit shifters'). They are brought down to Earth by realizing their size in relation to nature (in the form of dragonflies, trees and rivers), and they become human again. Later, in 'Stray dog and the chocolate shake' we're treated to robots who are forced to work in the dark, and a cadillac that never got the chance to carry a star.
In 'Sumday', machines are portrayed in the lyrics instead of being the main source of them, equals to the human subjects, detailed with empathic sublety by Jason Lyttle. Its a lyrical recipe that delivers.
But the real star of 'Sumday' is the sheer musical awareness of the band and the producer (who sounds suspiciously like Dave Fridmann). There are a series of production touches here that leave the listener staring vacantly into space mouthing 'wow' without irony, and a subtle painstaking consideration for the songs that don't need any extra punch.
That said the dawdling 'Lost on your merry way' does seem a little lightweight and pedestrian.
Despite this weaker track, the other eleven tracks show a band gradually moving forward.
It may not be a big step, and there hasn't been a huge progression in the music or how they record it. But on this evidence, a small step for Grandaddy is a giant leap for everyone else.-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
Jesus.
So are they moving forward or are they virtually indistinguishable? You seem unsure.
You should wait and review finished albums rather than downloading them. Oh, and it's self-produced by Lytle.
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Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
>So are they moving forward or are they virtually indistinguishable? You seem unsure.
Musically and lyrically they've improved, but its very much in the style of old.
>You should wait and review finished albums rather than downloading them. Oh, and it's self-produced by Lytle.
Got given a cd-r with just the title on it.
You can see whose production style he's learned
from though, eh?
>Jesus.
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Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
i would liken lytle's production to godrich more than the organic style friddman favours.-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
I bet you think you look really intelligent and knowledgeable don't you? Hahahahahah.
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Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
Ooh do I sense some inter-webzine rivalry here? Advertising your site by posting snotty comments on competing websites reviews seems pretty fucking lame to me. Get over it and don't be such a twat. His review was entertaining to read, yours by the looks of it (I didn't get to the bottom) was excessively long, worthy and read more like a dry and detailed press biography than a record review. Everyone knows what Grandaddy sound like - a brief, snappy, amusing review which gives us a quick lo-down on how the new stuff compares was just the biscuit in my case (and i suspect in many others).-
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
but the beards maaaaan. the beards.
why in't dere a band called the beards?
anyone wanna form the beards?
pass the sheep sheers. -
Re: Grandaddy - Sumday
Just reread my initial message and would like to apologise to the reviewer - i admit i know the person on the other site, and i like the new album a lot, but shouldn't have been so bitchy. sometimes i forget there are rules to online etiquettte
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Grandaddy - Sumday
I LOOOOVE BEARDS!
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