This is complete nostalgia overload if, like me, you loved the 90s American Indie rockers – Grandaddy. Fronted by music’s arguably most modest lead singer, Jason Lytle, the band have charmed me since my high school days – where I recall my devastation upon discovering that they’d already disbanded before my time. However, I was avid enough of a fan to follow Lytle’s solo work and catch his show in the intimate setting of Manchester Academy 3; including the Yours Truly, The Commuter album, which only reflected how much of the Grandaddy production he was in charge of, as their sound was still intact within it. Most people will only know of Grandaddy through ‘A.M. 180’; one of their grungier songs with an infectious synth riff, which was featured on the hit zombie film ’28 Days Later’ in 2002. So, with them being easily one of the most underrated bands of my short lifetime thus far, I was absolutely elated to discover that Grandaddy were going to give it another go and popped up rather conspicuously in a headline spot for the UK’s ‘End of the Road’ festival.
The Modesto group, who look closer to rangers or hunters than rockstars, made a mixture of devastatingly poetic melodies and crazy lo-fi experiments, like ‘Sikh In A Baja VW Bug’ – in which Lytle begins with a silly spoken word introduction about some guy with a surfboard at the traffic lights and goes on to scream “Sikh in a Baja Volkswagon bug!” to heavy guitar. The beauty of Grandaddy was that they were never always completely serious; they weren’t in it for the money, and when a song was seriously written – my god, it was raw. Lytle’s vocal fragility in ‘The Warming Sun’ is incredibly haunting, especially when paired with its vulnerable lyrics, such as “Do you ever ask yourself: how it could have maybe been?”.
The band is beyond worth a listen – each album is a different story and their storytelling is stellar. If you’re keen to catch them at a show, which I would if you’re a fan – you never know how long they’ll stick around for this time, check out one of these dates:
• HMV Ritz, Manchester – 29/08/2012
• O2 ABC, Glasgow – 30/08/2012
• End of the Road Festival, Salisbury – 31/08/2012 to 2/09/2012
• O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London – 04/09/2012
By Ebony L Nash
Dance Yrself Clean
