Send "Grandaddy " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Yesterday, information came to me. It arrived in the form of a sentence, spoken by one of the esteemed Pitchfork writers. It told of big-time music critics calling Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump "album of the year." Now, pardon me if I sound disturbed, but it's fucking March. Consider all the great bands with albums in the 2000 pipeline: Radiohead, The Wrens, Björk, The Beta Band-- do we really want to limit ourselves to Grandaddy this early on?Atmospheric pop has dominated Critics' Lists for too long. How long ago did Mercury Rev issue Deserter's Songs? Is this all we can aspire to in the future? Where's the goddamn rock these days? Isn't anyone interested in volume? While no one may ever step up to answer these questions, one thing is for certain-- time is running out for this genre, and I have a feeling it's not exactly going to age like wine. However, even at this late hour, The Sophtware Slump manages to sound reasonably fresh, yields its share of unshakable melodies, and excels in production. This is quite possibly the last great entry in the atmospheric pop canon. The lyrical content of The Sophtware Slump focuses largely on failed industrial machinery-- crashed airplanes, malfunctioning androids, and abandoned appliances-- returning to the earth, or just lying around broken. Undeniably, this is that blasted Radiohead influence rearing its twitchy eye. Yeah, since OK Computer, everyone wants to be them. Really, you can't blame people for attempting their own variations on the theme. OK Computer is, after all, one of the greatest albums our generation has experienced in its time. But bands need to realize that they're not Radiohead, and that no one ever made it into the history books by trying to do what another group had already done better. The Radiohead influence seems obvious here, coming from a band whose last album, the 1996 (pre-OK Computer) debut Under the Western Freeway, was comprised of light-hearted, Weezer-inspired sing-alongs. But surprisingly, Grandaddy inject the album with an air-tight cohesiveness, and enough of their own personality, emotion and creativity to warrant looking past the fact that someone's already succeeded in recording the ultimate anti-technology album....full text |
| Nme |
| The romanticised American West of rattlesnakes and tumbleweeds has gone. In its place are farms with fax machines, campers with laptops, electricity pylons studding mountain ranges like topographical acupuncture. Even down rural roads that have barely smelled the acrid, encroaching asphalt of modernity, nature maintains an uneasy relationship with technology. In his home town of Modesto, California, Grandaddy foreman Jason Lytle has seen broken-down washing machines and rusted fridges populating people's lawns like emblems of disappointed prosperity. Herein, he believes, is a warning: don't put too much faith in the machine. What is indispensable today will be obsolete tomorrow. Nothing endures, save the human spirit. This is the theme of Grandaddy's second album, and although it may lack the immediacy of their first, it is far more cohesive, sophisticated and poignant. Similar to the way in which Mercury Rev's 'Deserter's Songs' was a vivid snapshot of frontier twilight, 'The Sophtware Slump' is a picture of a place where the dreams of the last century have gone to die. It's about getting lost in the dazzling glare of the computer screen, and finding your way home again. And, yes, it's made by men with terrifying facial hair....full text |
| Bbc |
| The Sophtware Slump is one of the best albums of the 00s. Released in the first May of the decade, it was up against strong competition commercially (Sonic Youth, Eminem, Pearl Jam) – making its peak of 36 on the UK albums chart impressive indeed. But despite substantial critical praise, the group never broke the mainstream in the manner of similarly concept-heavy alt-rockers like The Flaming Lips and Radiohead. Grandaddy broke up in 2006, their final album Just Like the Fambly Cat an epitaph for a band whose work was singularly styled and frequently stunning. This is their finest studio set, but far from their most accessible collection. It’s a strange meeting of worlds, buzzing technology butting heads with bucolic retreat, backwoods mentality confounded by modernity. Frontman Jason Lytle produces, as he had on 1997’s debut disc Under the Western Freeway. But while Grandaddy’s first full-length was a bright and bizarre collection of oddball pop and hum-along indie (A.M. 180 is its best-known cut), these 46 minutes are rather more muted, introspective musings on expired alcoholic robots – Jed the Humanoid, and its fuzzy companion Jed’s Other Poem (with the great line, "I try to sing it funny like Beck, but it’s bringing me down") – standing in for eccentric essays on alien landscapes. It’s not without moments of instant-fix delight – The Crystal Lake is a perfect five minutes of songwriting gold – but this can be a heavy-going album for newcomers. But like so many great, so-called must-have long-players, repeat plays reward the listener with treats aplenty. Underneath the Weeping Willow is a tear-jerker to treasure, a sigh of a lyric desperate for retirement from the racket of the real world tugging on the ducts with a velveteen touch, its spare piano backdrop effortlessly beautiful. Hewlett’s Daughter is a calm, contemplative piece that briefly contorts into a clangourous rocker around the two-minute mark; and Broken Household Appliance National Forest is the greatest song ever written about abandoned fridge-freezers. But it’s the closer, So You’ll Aim Towards the Sky, that leaves the most lasting mark – and the biggest lump in the throat. If you don’t feel the slightest bit moved by the time a voice offers a simple "good luck", check your pulse....full text |
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