Grandaddy: Sumday
Album Review of Sumday, by Grandaddy [2003, V2 Records]
It is possible that by the time these few short paragraphs are first written and subsequently read by any and all of you, that you will know more about my own personal taste in music than necessarily that much about Grandaddy themselves, or this album, per se. With that in mind, let's refer to this album as Matty's Litmus Test. Even though in my mind, I have given the album a rating of 13/15, and I know you're probably thinking then -- if this is the bar, and where it's set, why not the full 15? And I think, listen -- write your own g.d. review if that's the case. No. Sorry. I think, if I had a great student in my History class in high school, and he or she wrote a really good paper, but in giving them an A grade, they might never do it again, and in giving them a B+ grade, that might show to them that someone thought they were ultimately capable of even more greatness, and thereby ideally begin to form their thoughts on how to keep pushing their writing even further -- well then, I'd give 'em the B+ and hopefully make a great lifelong learner out of 'em. Which, if that thought holds together or holds any water, is why Grandaddy only gets a 13 on this album, which is my favorite new record to hit the stores in a very long time.
I admit it, I prefer sweetness to rough edges. Which is not to say that Grandaddy and the post-pop Beach Boys inspired bands need to be thrown into the same judging pool with the White Stripes and whatever post punk weirdly pseudo-glam thing they sort of represent, because maybe that would be counter-productive. But sweetness, characterized by a softer, more high-pitched male or female voice, songs that end up stylistically being sung with something softer and more whisper-y over anything forced out and rough, and maybe then even lyrics that reflect a healthy curiosity in whatever is going on in the world over any kind of asserted opinion or prescription for dealing with it -- these are some of the qualities I refer to when I speak of "the soft." Maybe there's something about pace or speed, too. The songs on Sumday seem reflective, considerate, even dreamy at times, and with that dreaminess, a kind of important self-indulgence -- they're thinking about the stuff very very hard.
There is an entire generation that has now grown up on video games and digital vernacular. There is an entire age bracket that has never not been able to rely on the calculator or the computer, the cell phone or the video camera. How has all this impacted our memories? Our attention spans? Our work ethics? Our own personal unique-ness? I don't want to say that Grandaddy is like a social anthropologist set throwing the rubber ball of these questions around. It's something more mundane and personal, something more interesting and quirky. The album itself seems to start one place (in the digital), and once this has been established (just about the 1st half of the entire thing), and then move back and forth between the starting point and something more fleshy.
Song 2, "I'm on Standby," begins with an insistent acoustic strumming guitar, mid-paced and deliberate. When the lyrics start, we know something has gone wrong, as our narrator tells us his story. Quickly, we learn that it is in reality, a robot or a machine that is sadly reflecting on its own (lack of) purpose or use value: "Bye... I'm on standby / Out of order or sort of unaligned / Powered down for redesign / Bye Bye... I'm on Standby / According to the work order that you signed / I'll be down for some time." Those machines we feel de facto in charge of and better than, in Sumday, get a chance to speak their mind -- it's the dream of Rosie the Robot in Jetson's cartoon history come true: only it's sad and maybe obvious; after all, how would (or does) any of us react to the notion of becoming obsolete?
"El Caminos in the West" (track 6, right around the time when things move into something more fleshy on the album, thematically), with its dreamy pre-chorus refrain of "I feel so far away from home" inspires sadness and some bizarre and perhaps misplaced love for coastal living, or at least -- whatever is implied peace- and happiness- wise in the potential dream of life on the coast. The song doesn't get lost in this reverie though -- it becomes about one's struggle to get back to that kind of relative calm, seeing that something distracting and maybe destructive has forced one off one's course. The Grandaddy quirk is represented in the fact that for them, "peace of mind and happiness" is realized and bottled up in the notion of "El Caminos in the west." And I say this, feeling convinced by their devotion to the idea, knowing full well I hate those cars. Really, I do.
With Sumday, Grandaddy moves back and forth between stories set in the digital realm, and stories of sadness in the human landscape. How these two different but now merged arenas impact and inflect each other becomes a great deal of the lyrical substance of both the album and the band. In the "Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World," for instance (human landscape), we learn of the stage on which a terribly doomed relationship happens, the stage (parking lot) which then becomes the theme of their demise: "She's in the kitchen / Crying by the oven / Seems she really loved him / He's so drunk he's passed out in a Datsun / That's parked out in the hot sun / In the saddest vacant lot in all the world." It's sweet, and a bit silly Optic Nerve comic book style, but it works, and you end up humming it for several hours.
Lots of great material on Sumday. Sing-along's, meaningful slower stuff, pop riffs and great lyrics. It's not so often that an album hits the ground running on a complete lineup of good solid song after good solid song, sans filler or crap single. An excellent follow up to their last offering, and something that promises great things from Grandaddy in the future. Ideally, they'll continue to follow their own formula of do-it-yourself personal touch, home-grown Modesto style smart music. Go get it.
Purchase Grandaddy: Sumday online now.
(This review was originally published in 2003 at Smalldoggies online, Version 1)