2002-02-02 | THE CRITIC

GRANDADDY

"The Sophtware Slump"

I'm not sure if it was intended to be a concept album, but it seems to play out that way.

And what a strange concept it is.

It's not about one thing in particular, but all the different peices work together like a production line, making a very original, spacy, and wonderfully nerdy soundscape to fall back on. Let the background noise be your pillow. It will mesmerize you.

The first song, "he's simple, he's dumb, he's the co-pilot" is a very bold, and excellent introduction to the madness. When I say bold, i refer to the length of the song, which comes in at a vast 8 minutes and 52 seconds, which is very rare for a first song. I'm not really sure what it's about, but it definitely comes from the space age. Alot of the songs are about electronics, hi-techery (is that a word?), computers and other stuff.

"Hewlett's Daughter" sounds like your traditional sweet song, but it's not. I mean it is sweet, but it's not always clear what he's singing about. Maybe if I tried harder, and did a little research, I could find out, but I'm too busy listening. Plus there's a sort of charm to not having a complete understanding. I mean seriously, folks, they're just songs, and it's just music. A lot of the lyrics in Grandaddy's songs tend to be ambiguous, although they are not extremely complex. Is he referring to the Hewlett of Hewlett Packard? It's a wonderful tune, whatever it means, and quite possibly the best on the album.

"Jed the Humanoid" is a captivating story of a robot, originally christened "Jeddy 3" by the narrator, and later named, simply, "Jed". Apparently they made him out of peices of scrap metal, and whatever they found in the tool shed. He became a great friend of theirs until they ignored him to start working on other inventions. Don't ask me who "they" is, because I'm not exactly sure. Anyway, sadly, Jed became an alcoholic and fried his system both figuratively, and literally. He's dead now.

Their single, and MTV2 semi-fixture, "Crystal Lake", is a very magical song with crisp production, and mystifying synth noises in the background. It's a very slick song. I'm not sure what it's about either, really, but it's really sharp and catchy, and the video was great. The album is kind of half about nature, and half about electronics, as you will read about in the next song. I will try to explain.

"Broken Household Appliance National Forest" is actually about a forest with broken appliances all over the place. Unless he's speaking metaphorically, but I'm not smart enough to pick up on stuff like that. Apparently this forest resembles "showroom floors". I hope it has air conditioning and soda machines. I'd love to take the tour.

Jed makes his presence felt on another appearance in a later song, titled: "Jed's other Poem (beautiful ground)". Apparently, Jed wrote some poetry in his free time, attempting to show the world how he felt about being dumpedd, in favor of this years model. His poem is amusing, even if he thinks he fails when he tries to "sing it funny like Beck". Jed is a very interesting subject. I'm waiting for a full length Jed tribute.

Although on the outside it clearly sounds like a Flaming Lips or Built to Spill album at times, it's such an original work otherwise, that it stands well on it's own two feet. Be they human or robot.

There's even something called a "dial-a-view" which i'm not sure is an actual thing or not. It sounds like some kind of indie virtual reality game. They have a girl who is the voice for the "dial-a-view" who speaks in the same rhythm as the movie phone guy, but at a much sexier level. What is this dial-a-view and where can i find it? The sampling, and audio visions, the clarity and soothing background static, simultaneously combine for a delicious and highly addictive ear candy. Actually, it's so refreshing, you might call it an ear beverage.

Clean synths, strange and unique concepts, mysterious lyrics, cutting edge inventions, dreamlike echoes, and hauntingly beautiful overdubbing, among countless other soundscapes, make for an dynamic, pure sounding album, that as a book would read as abstract, but musically is tighter then Anna Nicole's __________ (you fill in the blank).

The image that seems to pop into my head is: Stanley Kubrick directing a movie about a semi-disenchanted, enchanted forest, which is run by a disgruntled robot, who for the duration of the cd, gets to play king of the jungle. But, I don't know why my brain shows me these things. I'm sure everybody will have their own image. Or maybe Grandaddy fans who understand it better will tell me to shut up.

But it's okay, because I enjoy myself when I listen to it. So that's got to be a testament to something. It's also all that matters. In the future, which Grandaddy's music seems to sometimes come from, certain things, such as album reviews will be simple. They won't have ignorant musical classifications by people who wouldn't know a good tune if it gave them a Stone-cold stunner. The reviews will simply say "bad", "decent", "good", "great", or "classic" next to them, and that will be that.

But for now you get to read mumbo jumbo like this.

4 stars.

(GREAT)

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