Grandaddy - Lo-fi electro-country

“Modesto is an unspectacular city. In that sense, we're its true children.” That's how guitarist Jim Fairchild answered a question about Grandaddy's hometown. Those who don't know Modesto might imagine it as one of those quiet little urban clusters where everyone you pass on the street says hello, because if they're not your friend, they're close to it. And being born in a place like that may well shield you from the frenzy that defines the big cities of the second millennium. Could this factor, combined with many others, be what allowed five “normal” guys to form one of the most interesting bands on the new American indie scene? Possible - indeed, probable.

It was 1992 when Jason Lytle (vocals and guitar), Kevin Garcia (bass) and Aaron Burtch (drums) formed the embryo of the band. A self-produced album in 1994, the raw Complex Party Come Along Theories, of which only 200 copies were pressed, and the following year Grandaddy became the band we know today: keyboardist Tim Dryden and guitarist Jim Fairchild joined the three original members. The sound was close to the “Pavement-esque” brand of lo-fi, but with greater attention to melody mixed with rough, abrasive moments. The two EPs, Machines Are Not She (1995) and A Pretty Mess By This One Band (1997) - later reissued together by V2 on the CD The Broken Down Comforter Collection - clearly show the band's musical approach, where the simplicity is only apparent, with the guitar and keyboard sketches often veering into madness.

The signs looked excellent, and when the first “real” album came out in 1998, they were immediately confirmed. Under The Western Freeway is a little gem that manages to merge Neil Young with Pavement and the '90s American indie scene. From the acoustic “Nonphenomenal Lineage” to the melancholy of the instrumental title track, by way of the scratchy “A.M.180” and the distorted “Summer Here Kids,” this is a record with an always-light sonic undertow, even when surrounded by occasionally angry atmospheres.

The commotion caused by the album's success took the band by surprise: “It was our first album, and on top of that it was with a major label. We had expectations, but they were really modest. We never thought we were doing anything easy enough or fashionable enough to hope for any real success. And the surprise depends entirely on what your expectations are. Our only hope was that someone might appreciate our music, not much more than that.” And plenty of people did appreciate the album, enough to turn Grandaddy into a cult phenomenon - one that grew dramatically in scale in 2001, with the release of The Sophtware Slump.

The path, already fascinating on previous records, became even more captivating and intriguing. The opening declaration of love for human beings, with its call not to surrender to the advance of new technology, reaches extremely high levels of intensity. The evolution of the sound is undeniable, but the band's core traits remain unchanged. Fairchild states: “This is our language, no doubt about it. However much we evolve, I don't think we'll stray too far from the coordinates we've laid out so far. Jason's songwriting is visibly improving. Now some elements are sharper, the details better defined, the meanings more focused. The lyrics stay very simple and keep operating on two levels: one more directly aimed at the listener's ear, the other more concerned with big themes. And I think those are also the main traits of our music, with its intimate, minimal side pairing with broader, more majestic melodic openings.” As for the idea of a link to a certain pop dimension, Fairchild is very clear: “I don't think there are many points of contact with the modern concept of pop music, because we don't have any deceptive elements or easy winks to the audience.” And it's all true: the writing and the sound are more mature, forging a perfect union dominated by a sense of disorientation that spreads across the whole album. From the aching desolation of “Jed The Humanoid” to the emotion delivered by the piano on “Underneath The Weeping Willow,” it's a delirium of simple illusions, with a nostalgic melancholy that's always present and never overdone. Tracks like “Miner At The Dial-A-View,” “Jed's Other Poem” and the closing “So You'll Aim Toward The Sky” reach emotional peaks rarely found on today's music scene, thanks to the union of guitars and “disruptive” electronics.

To those who have compared them to a mix of Neil Young and Kraftwerk, Jason Lytle replied: “Who knows. It makes me think of Neil Young's 'Trans Am.' There it sounded like he'd invited Kraftwerk into the session himself. Those names can work as reference points to give an idea of the blend in our music. In that sense, I can agree. I'm not willing to name any one precise influence, but it's undeniable that I'm drawn to the possibility of merging the sound of traditional American songs with the technological sound of electronics. Although, in our case, the electronics are more of a disruptive element, or at most something that enriches the whole. I like hearing what happens when you pair certain seemingly alien sounds with a conventional rock setup. I'm very drawn to the indescribability of certain sounds, to the mystery they conceal. Just as, on the other hand, I'm still interested in pure human expressiveness. Voices and guitars still carry a lot of force. The electronics add the mystery.”

Sumday (2003), on the other hand, is a transitional record. The wild-card unpredictability is gone, as is the charm of imperfection and spontaneity; what remains, however, are Lytle's extraordinary songwriting gifts, and songs like “El Caminos In The West” and “Saddest Vacant Lot In All The World” prove it. The rest of the album glides by on well-crafted indie pop, inspired as much by the Beach Boys as by Neil Young, with highlights such as the opening track “Now It's On,” the already-mentioned “El Caminos In The West,” and the dazed “Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake,” with that little keyboard line that's so very Grandaddy!

Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla (2005) is a substantial EP, built around a hazy concept.

This time there's only Jason Lytle, the band's mastermind but here also its sole pair of hands, aside from help from Aaron Burtch, as ever on drums.

“Pull The Curtains” finds Grandaddy (or rather, Lytle alone) in top form: tuneful yet rough-edged, as is only fitting. And for the occasion, the little keyboard sound from The Sophtware Slump is dusted off, having been left in storage from that point until now. “At My Post” is rich with different colors and atmospheres, with that sweet little “Aaah” chorus and that gait somewhere between post-rock languor and small-town American languor.

The ballads “A Valley Son (Sparing)” and “Cinderland,” on the other hand, are steeped in melancholy. Standing out alongside “Pull The Curtains” is “Florida.” The lyrics are excellent, in Jason Lytle's best scruffy, surreal tradition. The music is a kind of ironic, swaggering, full-throttle hard rock, seasoned with keyboards and accordion, complete with a deliriously heavy solo right in the middle. And if that weren't enough, there's the sweet finale of “Goodbye?”, all dusk and acoustic guitar.

Just Like The Fambly Cat (2006) was supposed to mark the end of the band, yet it doesn't feel like a farewell: the sensations are (almost) the same as before, the impressions genuine, and the slight misstep of Sumday forgotten. The underlying concept is continuity. Skewed, synthetic pop, intense even when it skirts sheer lightness: the ingredients are often all there, with the requisite intimacy ready to be lit up by a blinding glare. We're not at the level of The Sophtware Slump, it must be said, but the gap isn't as wide as one might have feared.

The underlying vague unreality convinces just as much ("Summer…It’s Gone") as the exaltation of the ephemeral in a pop aesthetic of fake introspection ("Elevate Myself"), unspooling the exquisiteness of the melodies into adulterated, elaborate arrangements. It's inevitable, then, to notice how the stylistic signature is a delicacy all its own, deliberately irrational, persuasive and welcoming even when it's wallowing in its own affliction ("Real View Mirror", the best track of the bunch).

By contrast, some of the references Lytle himself has mentioned (above all Electric Light Orchestra) actually point to an approach rather than a concrete outcome in practice. Grandaddy haven't changed the rules: the game is still played between synths, distortion, and a personal (yet obvious) take on song form, even pulling a face at expansiveness ("Guided Down Denied"), without disowning their lo-fi craftsman's attitude.

And while the risk of aimless drift is skillfully avoided ("The Animal World"), the main shortcoming might lie in a few moments of uncertainty that, when unintentional, drain the chiaroscuro shades being used. Still, these are just exceptions, not the throughline of a lucid, comforting record for anyone who missed a certain kind of Grandaddy. Not a miracle, but that had already been pulled off once, and repeating it was objectively an impossible task.

With the band dissolved, after a long period of crisis, Jason Lytle moved from his native Modesto to a remote little wooden house in the mountains of Montana and spent roughly six months writing his debut solo LP, Yours Truly, The Commuter (2009), a largely inspired if not exceptional work, steeped in an atmosphere of ease and serenity.

As was the case with "Sumday", what prevails here are the sweet, slow songs. The only lively, rocking track is the enjoyable "It's The Weekend". The album's best moments, though, are the opener and title track "Yours Truly, The Commuter", a gentle ballad introduced by soft little keyboard notes, on which the forty-something from Modesto sings "I was left for dead" (meaning, musically speaking); the sunny "Brand New Sun", whose intro closely echoes that of "Who'll Stop The Rain" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and builds to a deeply moving crescendo; "Furget It", a minimal track carried by a piano chord that slowly, slowly works its way into your soul; and the dreamy closer "Here For Good", on which the musician declares his intent to do good through his art, first and foremost for himself, but also for whoever is listening.

By contrast, you find yourself yawning through tracks like the unoriginal "Birds Encouraged Him", the whiny "You're Too Gone", the dull "Rollin' Home Alone" and "The Ghost Of My Old Dog", dedicated to an Australian shepherd dog that was hit by a car. The remaining tracks are pleasant but unexciting, among them "This Song Is The Mute Button", which is introduced by the second movement of Beethoven's famous seventh sonata.

All in all, it's a decent album with a few excellent tracks, though it left its author not entirely satisfied, and it would be followed by a harder, more chaotic record.

In the meantime, Jason Lytle's Christmas album can be downloaded for free from his official website. The record is titled "Merry X-Mas 2009" and consists of 7 tracks improvised on piano.

At the end of 2012 — while a live Grandaddy reunion is underway, perhaps heralding a new studio follow-up — Jason Lytle releases his second solo work, Dept. Of Disappearance (2012), conceived once again in his buen retiro in the pleasant state of Montana.

 Here Lytle seems to have found a kind of existential peace made up of walks in the woods, music, and blissful solitude, so much so that a track like "Get Up And Go", in its sparse, bare-bones lyrics and its optimistically airy melody, offers an encouragement that sounds like a declaration of rediscovered serenity: “get up and go, / you can do it, / everything is gonna be all right”. As if the "Department Of Disappearance" that Jason claims, in the title track, to be working for were nothing but the fulfillment of a desire nurtured for years by a musician who has never hidden his shyness or his longing for introspection.

 Compared to his previous solo work — and to Grandaddy's albums — Dept. Of Disappearance doesn't involve any major shift in direction. Essentially every note is played and arranged in near-total self-sufficiency by the Californian musician, while the style remains the one we know: chanting analog synths and piano shaping each song into broad, hypnotic crescendos, folk-rooted acoustic passages alternating with saturated electric guitar, his gentle Neil Young-like voice doubled and tripled by backing harmonies, vast panoramic openings and sudden slowdowns, pained introspection and a desire to tell stories. All of it wrapped in the usual bittersweet, dreamlike, at times raw blend of electronic sounds and singer-songwriter tradition, which has fun piling up more or less subliminal references, from Electric Light Orchestra to Radiohead, from Kraftwerk to Pink Floyd, by way of the American psychedelic tradition.

 It's hard to single out one track as more successful than another among these ten songs, which certainly suffer from a pronounced repetitiveness, but which at the same time offer a sense of solid, evocative cohesion capable of resisting the risk of tedium. If we had to pick a couple, we might point to the solemn pianistic sweetness of "Somewhere There's A Someone" and the drawn-out atmospheric complexity of the aforementioned "Last Problem Of The Alps", while the endless suite "Gimme Click Gimme Grid" is less convincing, closing the album with a burst of ambition that feels decidedly out of place.

All in all, "Dept. Of Disappearance" is a solid record but one lacking standout moments, pleasant and inspired yet perhaps also a bit flat, a faithful witness nonetheless to the fact that Jason Lytle's creative drive is far from spent.

Meanwhile, in March 2012, Grandaddy are ready for their reunion. At first there are no long-term plans, with only a handful of dates in California or at European festivals like End Of The Road and Rock En Seine on the agenda. Even though no new studio work is scheduled, the chemistry among the five musicians proves to have been recovered in no time. Of course, things then take their time. Another four years have to pass before the Modesto band is found touring in any proper sense, but the moment turns out to be right for the announcement fans had been waiting for: in just a few months, an album of new material will arrive. On March 3, 2017, Last Place is released, and Grandaddy truly come home at last, fully and without needing to resort to lighthearted disguises (Arm Of Roger) or eccentric side ventures (Admiral Radley, with their friends Earlimart), without the hesitations or half-measures of comebacks thrown together somewhat haphazardly, for mere convenience. What was needed was Jason Lytle's return to Modesto, which came about for practical reasons after the years spent first in Montana and then in the small mecca of Portland, marking, among other things, the end of a turbulent relationship. Looked at closely, this Californian rentrée of his also takes on the dimensions of a matter of the heart, as it could hardly be otherwise. "Last Place" then, as an ultimate refuge, the "pretty great place to hide" that our man sings about today with heartening candor. And "Last Place" as an identikit portrait restoring its own rough-hewn face, also sketched on the basis of impressions offered by not entirely impartial witnesses, the allies and devotees of days gone by.

The American band's fifth LP comes out on the 30^th Century Records label of their old pal Danger Mouse, exactly five years after the band's reformation and more than two since their previous studio effort, Just Like The Fambly Cat.

It's frankly hard to comment on this record and claim any real objectivity, having fallen almost inevitably under the spell of the Californians' magical inventions over the years. Let's be upfront about it: in the end this is a superb exercise in self-revival, if only to clear the field of misunderstandings and of the pre-emptive demerits handed out by detractors — the militants of the "evolve or die (and don't you dare be reborn)" faction. While acknowledging that, it should also be stressed that there's no pandering going on here: these artists simply are the music they play, with no great conceptual fuss, and while Last Place may well be an album entirely turned toward the past, within its horizon one can easily make out the reassuring shine of honest work. Ready, go: "Way We Won't" serves up the first madeleine of a rich breakfast, laying on the table the comfort of the same melancholy atmosphere as the band's Sumday, of which it almost sounds like a remake of the opener "Now It's On". Sticking with that same reference point, the single "Evermore" boasts a wonderfully leaden inflection, all pastels smudged with grey, which turns out perhaps less showy than the usual formula but proves just as captivating as the saddest, most infectious pages of that still-underrated gem. "Oh She Deleter :(" instead works as a simple instrumental intro – recalling the twilight ones on The Software Slump – for a "The Boat Is In The Barn" in which Lytle's vocals and expressive quirks stand out against the sonic backdrop with particular clarity, raising the typicality quotient in yet another bittersweet ballad of the house style (including a remarkably striking ecstatic passage, whose only flaw is perhaps rehashing a cliché the band has often overused), while "Jed The 4th" is an almost on-the-nose nod to the adorable humanoid who once inhabited those same grooves, with less electronic recklessness but the exact same watercolor charm of back then.

In broad strokes, then, the long-awaited comeback album lives up to expectations, especially thanks to its deft blend of noisy tangles and melodic sweetness (following the unmistakable blueprint of Tim Dryden's keyboards). Jim Fairchild's guitar riff on "Brush With The Wild" has the look of a blazing siren, while Jason's voice remains the same soothing companion to countless overcast afternoons. And while the high degree of recognizability plays no small part in the record's endearing appeal, the quintet makes up for that sense of autopilot with a physical tightness that's more than up to the task. Fortunately, the roster also includes the band's rowdier, more dissolute incarnation ("Chek Injin"), the kind usually reserved for the more eccentric releases like Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla or for the side projects mentioned earlier — two-minute doses of physiological letting-loose, placed there on purpose to delight fans of the rougher, naif side of the band.

On the second half the album raises the stakes with a certain boldness. The surge kicks off with "I Don't Wanna Live Here Anymore", which is, quite simply, exactly the kind of aching song Jason will thankfully never stop (re)writing. The same goes for the humble, beautiful farewell of "Songbird Son", electro foam included, a reminder of moods one evidently still needed. Its pull is the idyllic yet, in its own way, epic pull of the finest passages of the past, including the solo albums, and in a sense it only confirms what we already suspected: that what we love most about Grandaddy will never fade or be betrayed. The same goes, even more so, for the oblique, marginal spleen of that other gem, "That's What You Get For Gettin' Outta Bed": warm yet intimate phrasing, the organ's slightly sad flourishes, and exactly the fragility it calls for, not an ounce more or less. All of it familiar once again, and yet exactly as we'd imagine the most gratifying, languid and peaceful of homecomings to sound. And if this soundtrack were to stake everything on the promise of an ideal mission-statement track, it's in "A Lost Machine" that you'd have to look for it, in its loop at once enchanting and disenchanted, in its soft dream-pop trance, in the endless singalong it resolves into. Lost machines suddenly found again, forgotten dreams resurfacing in memory like choruses to which far more than a handful of minutes of our attention has been entrusted. Last Place is like being moved all over again while relieving the ecstasy of a happy abduction.

The tour supporting the album, including the band's first two Italian dates in many years, was scheduled for late spring 2017. Just a handful of days before it was due to start, however, on May 1st bassist Kevin Garcia suffered a heart attack and died the following day, at just forty-one. The blow was too hard to simply carry on as if nothing had happened, and every show on the calendar was cancelled. Inevitably, Grandaddy's future once again became uncertain.

In 2024 came Blu Wav, the first album without Kevin Garcia after seven years of silence. It's hard to say whether this counts as the band's comeback or whether we're looking at a project conceived solely by frontman Jason Lytle.

Blu Wav aims to play on a fusion of bluegrass and new wave, but the result feels closer to a collection of folk-rooted songs performed, for the most part, in lulling three-quarter time.

Towering over these soft, rarefied "country tunes played in the desert" is Max Hart's pedal steel guitar (The War On Drugs and Melissa Etheridge), which tints almost all of "Blu Wav" in melancholy hues. Besides the guitar, which is almost always acoustic, the rest of the work relies on synths ready to fill every frequency and sketch celestial trajectories, lifting our gaze up from the sea of malaise with which good old Jason usually seasons his creations.

Relationships gone wrong, with all their baggage of regret and nostalgia, are almost always at the center of the narrative. Whether the frontman's own family separation had any real bearing on this is a fairly reasonable doubt to have.

Love troubles leave no way out: they gnaw at everyday life in the office cubicles of "Watercooler", crying jags in the bathroom included; they burst in with memories of a bus trip on "On a Train or Bus"; they mock us with a malicious app that only plays the songs our exes loved most on "Jukebox App"; or they torment the conscience with the awareness of not having been the right person on "Long As I'm Not The One". Only when the synths tear open stretches of immensity on one of the album's peaks, "You're Going to Be Fine and I'm Going to Hell", do we get a genuine sense of relief.

Isolation seems to be the only cure. And it hardly matters whether it's a place of the mind, as in the introspective country of "Cabin In My Mind", or out amid the wild nature of a national park on "East Yosemite", where, between solemn piano chords and darting pedal steel guitar notes, the boy who once slept soundly under the weeping willow reappears, waking up happy once more.

Left only on the margins are the band's long-standing themes, like the struggle to adapt to today's digitized world, which only surfaces in the lyrics of the opening track "Blu Wav" ("Open your eyes and your laptop/ To the sunrise"), or the bucolic nostalgia found in the Belle and Sebastian-ish tones of "Ducky, Boris and Dart".

Certainly Blu Wav can't compete with the Modesto band's finest work (Under The Western Freeway or The Software Slump), but it proves to be a pleasant album, an unusual collection of songs held back to a gentle trot, with a first half that's arguably too uniform and a second half that's more visceral and decidedly more intense. There's a clear desire to break away from past work — after all, what would be the point of a band of fifty-somethings chasing their old selves with toy keyboards and distorted guitars just to spell out their weariness with life, their sense of not fitting into the present?

It's hard to know quite how to read Blu Wav; since it feels closer to Jason Lytle's solo work, it could mark the definitive end of the band's career, or it could simply be a snapshot of a transitional moment in the leader's (of Grandaddy?) life, waiting – as the intro puts it – for a "new day", the start of a new chapter. But it might also be enough to think that there's still someone left out in the country, drinking beer, playing guitar and counting the stars.

Contributions by Matteo Lavagna ("Sumday"), Nicola Minucci ("Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla"), Stefano Ferreri ("Last Place"), Paolo Agnoletto ("Yours Truly, The Commuter"), Andrea Cornale ("Dept. of Disappearance"), Lorenzo Montefreddo ("Blu Wav")

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