I took me a while with Grandaddy. But then it took them a while too. A while for the Modesto, California band to identify their vision and cleave the path they've taken with such grace and majesty for almost twenty five years since the release of The Sophtware Slump in 2000. A timely release. In the marketplace at a remarkable moment in human history,
A remarkable record too. I'm thinking about it as I listen to Blu Wav their quite beautiful new album which came out yesterday and sounds like another instant classic to me. Grandaddy have marked out their own dignified space over the years. Even if when they first arrived you could bracket them relatively easily with any number of plaid shirted cosmic Post Grunge American dreamers; Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Buffalo Tom and Red House Painters, who set out a few years before them. Now Grandaddy are out on their own.
In The Sophtware Slump they spoke with astonishing clarity in a singular way about what had been lost. How strange and alienating it feels sometimes to be cast adrift in a confusing and reasonless digital age. Sat on a barstool in a modern neon lit bar in the Sunshine State with Neil Young & Crazy Horse coming out of the jukebox and coyotes howling at the moon outside in the night. Lost in your thoughts. Freshly dumped by the love of your life and having drunk too many shots. Not sure how you would find yourself home. I'm not sure they ever did. They sound all the better for not doing so listening to Blue Wav now.
Blu Wav paints new variations on the path eked out all those years ago on The Sophtware Slump. The album title is appropriate. They're still working on their essentially blue period. Their blue seam. These songs are gentle but quite essential additions to their canon. Glass half empty perhaps but nonetheless.majestic. This is a record that appreciates beauty and understands it intimately. You won't hear albums more dignified or sadly melodic or worldly wise in 2024..
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