I listened to Grandady's newest and it sounmds like Grandaddy is shifting from using the normal space-rock sound that made me love them so much, they decided to add some more guitars and turn it into a kind of shifty-concept album. Amazingly, a band sometime fails to tell us whenever they plan to change their music and end up freezing their fanbase to Sumday or The Sophtware Slump. To me, Grandaddy's single "Pull The Curtains", I thought it sounded pretty terrible. No, not terrible. Just a bit sloppy. A stigmata lik that makes you wonder what you are going to do once you listen to the album.
Generally, the singer just wants to get out of California, while he's still alive, yet he has a few songs to spew before he runs for cover. One of them is "Pull The Curtains". The beginning sounds a bit promising when Plaid drums were an intro into emo territory, all while keeping the computer blips to remind us by. Though lyrics like "Pull the curtains on the day/Sometimes it is the only way." gives me hope that all the plots isn't lost within a band that would change their music with a concept. "At My Post", at first, akes he use of synthesizers to a good use, before starting kind of messy and lazy in attempt at space shoegazing that it diesn't even sound like they ar trying to bring lighters up or get us to support the story. The thing that keeps us going is his heavenly harmonizing, which gets lost in all different types of weird noises mixed together. In other words, I listened to this song, and very unlike a Granddady song, this song just gets boring to listen to. I thought the song was going to stop at 4:08 till it went on, leaving me a bit distraught and waiting for a few albums of instumentals. "A Valley Son (Sparing)" personally sounds like a Sumday B-Side that should have been the reason for buying the album. Aside from the voice from Jason Lytle, the music compliments the song wonderfully, and could possibly be the one standout of the song that we can listen through without worry. "Cinderland" opens up sounding like an interlude instrumental, but it breaks down into a synth-laced chillout rocker, making it an accessible standout. Now, notice I say "accessible" standout.
"If you are who you say you are, get up her to the bar we'll plot a plan to take down the man," the leader sings in "F**k The Valley Fudge", a piano-laced teenage sing-along. Somewhere along the line you will find out why the song ends up namechecking the likes of companies like Applebees and Chuck E. Cheese. In the middle of the song is all ambient propeller-sounding noise, that makes us wonder, "Wha...is this over already? Well, that was one of the worst I have ever heard thus far." And indeed the idea of building a self-written (not to mention small) anthem about dumping commercialism and ending with approximately one whole minute of noise and asingle piano noise is just disappointing in levels we can't understand.
"Florida" is a song in which sounds like it is trying to be punk, but to sing "Florida" so partly blandly and freely that it takes like the rust of blue and yellow clash, and have someone scream like a banshee doesn't quite help my interest in the song. This passage seems too hard to be an underground response as a suite to American Idiot it isn't quite funny. On the possibly last passage, "Goodbye?", the song ends with an acoustic passage about saying goodbye to where you are, leaving it all behind. And it sounds a bit complex on whether the song is melancholy because halfway through the song, there comes a choir out of nowhere to help close the album, as if the suspicion and hint of melancholiness was all worth the trip. And now it seems that the album is all about getting out of where you are, after having a bit of grudges and hidden good times with it.
I know the cardinal rule of reviewing is to not worry about a band's changing and to just worry about the music in the now, but so far the music is just out of order. There is only a few things about this album that sounds like a passage worth going through. And a Granddaddy album is always into some order waiting to fascinate us. Yet, it turns out the diary is somewhat interesting, yet not isn't as interesting as you thought it would be. Whenever a band makes music that compliments music and lyrics and builds a high impression, and comes out with a few good songs that sounds just as good to be a score of a movie, that is pretty troubling, you know? Maybe there will come a full thought of the diary, just to change my hopes on the matter.
Rating: 5.5/10
My First Ever Review
Grandaddy: Excerpts From The Diary of Todd Zilla EP (V2)
