Grant Lee Buffalo - Shiva Burlesque - Proudly out of time

From the Paisley Underground to post-punk: Shiva Burlesque

The history of rock is full of overlooked or simply underrated names, of bands that arrived too early or too late to earn the success they deserved, of artists who consistently follow their own passions, heedless of fads and commercial trends. Grant-Lee Phillips is certainly one of them: over the course of his now long career, the Californian musician was a member of Shiva Burlesque, one of the most interesting and underrated bands of the 80s, brushed up against (but never truly chased) mainstream success with Grant Lee Buffalo in the 90s, and has pursued an excellent - and largely ignored by both audiences and critics - solo path from 2000 onward. A long career with a single common thread: consistency and the desire to make music regardless of fads and trends. Let's try to retrace part of this long story.

When Grant-Lee Phillips arrives in Los Angeles, around 1983, he's just another small-town kid chasing his fortune in the big city, with a desire to study film in his pocket and the dream of forming a rock band in his heart. At that time, the City of Angels is burning in the brief but intense fire of the "days of wine and roses", the musical season that would go down in rock history as the "Paisley Underground" - a happy, unforgettable and somewhat paradoxical attempt to fuse the renewing impulses of English post-punk with the deeply American tradition of psychedelia and country-rock. These are years of ferment, in which Los Angeles becomes the capital, both physical and in some sense moral, of a musical movement the general public would never really notice, but which produced a handful of excellent new bands, such as Steve Wynn's Dream Syndicate, the Roback brothers' Rain Parade, Mike Quercio's Three O'Clock and Susanna Hoffs's delightful Bangles - groups with different shades and characteristics, but all united by a recovery of the 60s roots of American rock, from the "jingle-jangle" of the Byrds to the psychedelia of Love and Quicksilver Messenger Service, from the untamed guitars of Neil Young to the hammering, obsessive sound of the Velvet Underground.

In this vibrant musical landscape, Grant-Lee Phillips takes his first steps and is clearly influenced by it. His earliest partner is Jeffrey Clark, who, like him, comes from Stockton, a town (obviously by American standards) of around 250,000 people in Northern California. The original duo from Stockton is gradually joined by other members, until the lineup settles into its definitive form: Jeffrey Clark on vocals, Grant-Lee Phillips on guitar, James Brenner on bass and Joey Peters on drums. The newborn band, taking the evocative and fascinating name Shiva Burlesque, would go on to record two surprising albums, deeply influenced by the Paisley Underground but also by English post-punk, which would remain one of the best kept secrets of American rock of that era.

The first Shiva Burlesque album, self-titled, recorded for the small label Nate Starkman and produced by the band together with Richard Andrews, arrives in 1987 - decidedly too late, by which point both the Paisley Underground and English post-punk had, in a sense, already run their course, and this probably affected the scant attention received by Clark and Phillips's band, which, despite some critical appreciation, was immediately written off commercially as outdated and out of fashion. Yet the album is truly remarkable, starting with its dreamlike cover reproducing a bizarre painting by Deborah Lawrence, an artist specializing in surreal collages, and continuing with its more strictly musical content: a handful of magnificent songs (written by Clark and Phillips) that seem to fuse the captivating psychedelia of clear Paisley lineage with the dark, introverted and dreamy atmospheres of English post-punk bands like Echo & The Bunnymen or Chameleons.

The record opens with the solemn march of the excellent "Indian Summer", the ideal soundtrack to a twilit western, with Clark's voice seeming to echo that of Jim Morrison (or perhaps Ian McCulloch?). The mournful "Two Suns" does even better, blending English post-punk atmospheres, country-rock and an almost Eastern-tinged psychedelia. There's even a hint of Pink Floyd in the finale of the lively, guitar-driven third track, titled "The Lonesome Death Of Shadow Morton", while "The Black Ship" returns to merging Paisley psychedelia (the song wouldn't have been out of place in the Dream Syndicate's repertoire) with the tortured, intense sounds of English post-punk.

Jeffrey Clark doesn't have an unforgettable or especially original voice, but he sings with his heart quite literally on his sleeve, and on "Morning" he once again manages to summon the ghost of Jim Morrison. The following four tracks are solid and thoroughly enjoyable, though perhaps the least interesting overall, occasionally enriched (or perhaps slightly weighed down) by Leslie Medford's trumpet.

All in all, Shiva Burlesque's debut is a very fine record that convinces, and at times captivates, through the austere, pained and intense tone of its compositions - though these still betray a touch of immaturity and an inability to maintain a consistent level of quality across the whole album.

In the three years separating the debut from its follow-up, Shiva Burlesque play live a great deal and make some significant changes to the band's lineup, bringing in cellist Greg Adamson, while bassist James Brenner is replaced by Paul Kimble. The new album, titled Mercury Blues and produced by the band together with Charlie Brocco, is completed for the Fundamental label in the summer of 1990. Jeffrey Clark and Grant-Lee Phillips's band has clearly grown, both musically and compositionally, as well as in the studio: Mercury Blues is a little masterpiece, a mature, assured and beautifully crafted record, far removed from the naivety and unripe taste that had characterized - and in some ways limited - their nonetheless excellent debut.

The record (whose cover features an unsettling, bizarre Medusa mask photographed by Daniel Morrison) marks a decisive turn toward the roots of American rock, reinterpreted through a Paisley sensibility and in the vein of Steve Wynn's Dream Syndicate. Little remains of the post-punk atmospheres of the debut; Shiva Burlesque now look to the great American tradition. The "new direction" is already apparent from the title track that opens the record, introduced by Grant-Lee Phillips's slide guitar: the new gospel to follow is the country-rock and psychedelia of Green On Red and Dream Syndicate, the new horizon is the American frontier with its countless tales of wandering losers under a scorching, merciless sun. Jeffrey Clark's voice has clearly improved: his singing is still intense and anguished, but more measured and controlled.

The second track, titled "Nez Percé", is an excellent ballad, building to a dramatic crescendo and deeply steeped in country-rock moods. Grant-Lee Phillips's guitar, superbly backed by the Kimble-Peters rhythm section, turns sharp and psychedelic on the excellent "Sick Friend", with Jeffrey Clark at times sounding uncannily like Steve Wynn. The song, with its epic, delirious crescendo that dissolves at the end into a relaxed, dreamy coda, is probably the album's masterpiece.

On the fourth track, titled "Cherry Orchard", Jeffrey Clark hands the microphone to Grant-Lee Phillips, who sings lead for the first time: the track is a dark, introverted (and perhaps slightly tedious) ballad that doesn't entirely convince, betraying the guitarist's fundamental inexperience as a singer. The volume rises considerably, with Leslie Medford's trumpet prominent, on the crackling, guitar-driven "Chester The Chimp", sung in duet by Clark and Phillips, while the following "Who Is The Mona Lisa?" is an intense psychedelic gallop that wouldn't be out of place as the soundtrack to a mournful, modern western. Country-rock atmospheres, distorted psychedelia and fine melody are blended flawlessly on the seventh track, titled "Do The Pony", nicely introduced by Greg Adamson's cello. "Sparrow's Song" is a strange (and not entirely convincing) ballad, while "Peace" once again mixes psychedelia and country-rock to excellent effect.

Mercury Blues is an excellent work, brushing up against masterpiece status, but one whose fusion of country-rock and psychedelia unfortunately arrives too late, by which point the Paisley Underground is dead and buried and critics and audiences alike are focused on the first stirrings of the emerging grunge phenomenon. Shiva Burlesque dissolve at this point: Jeffrey Clark would go on to a solo career that proved anything but prolific and decidedly short on rewards ("Sheer Golden Hooks", from 1996, remains to this day his only work), while the path taken by Grant-Lee Phillips, Paul Kimble and Joey Peters would prove far more interesting, as they began working together on a new project that, after narrowly being called Machine Elves, would take the name Grant Lee Buffalo, clearly signaling the guitarist's new leadership.

Starting over as a three-piece: Grant Lee Buffalo

The debut album by the new trio lineup comes out in 1993 on Slash Records, is titled Fuzzy, is produced by bassist Paul Kimble, and proves to be a masterpiece, plain and simple. Grant-Lee Phillips's leading role is further underscored by the cover, with the guitarist - who, incidentally, wrote every song on the album - pictured in extreme close-up. The differences between the new band and Shiva Burlesque are fairly clear. On vocals we find Grant-Lee Phillips, who has grown surprisingly as a singer compared to the faltering performance he gave on Mercury Blues: for the new record, the thirty-year-old guitarist from Stockton unveils an extremely clean, pleasant vocal timbre that bears a strange resemblance to Mike Scott of the Waterboys, marking a decisive shift away from Jeffrey Clark's tormented, visceral singing style. Paul Kimble's production moves toward an "open", airy sound, which Grant-Lee Phillips has said was influenced by recording at Brilliant Studios, a former foundry whose vast spaces shaped the sound and overall mood of the sessions.

Even from a musical standpoint, Grant Lee Buffalo are something quite different from Shiva Burlesque: the nods to English post-punk are now a distant memory, while the Paisley-derived psychedelia is gradually set aside (though it still surfaces now and then) in favor of a sound more rooted in folk tradition, indebted to the lesson of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, the Band, but also contemporary acts like American Music Club's Mark Eitzel and Michael Stipe's R.E.M. (whom Grant Lee Buffalo, perhaps not by chance, would support on tour in 1995).

Grant Lee Buffalo's music is a kind of electro-acoustic alt-country (or Americana, as it's usually called) built on airy, winning melodies, with Grant-Lee Phillips's clean voice well to the fore and his guitar solidly backed by the tight rhythm section of Kimble and Peters.

Fuzzy opens with the lively, elegant "The Shining Hour" and continues with the epic crescendo of the electric, guitar-driven ballad titled "Jupiter & Teardrop," one of the record's finest songs, telling a story that could have come from the pen of Warren Zevon, a stark, aching love story from the city's underbelly (“Just a girl who can’t say no/ And her sweetheart on parole/ Parents named her jupiter/ To bless her with a lucky soul/ He’s a boy who never cried/ When they locked him up inside/ And she nicknamed him her teardrop/ For the tattoo by his eye”). After the strange, introverted interlude of "Fuzzy," the mood opens up and turns airy for the splendid, melodic and at times impetuous "Wish You Well," with lyrics of open political protest (“Newspaper cloaks to wrap the truth/ Propagand-acid dropped on the youth/ …/ They talk about building morale and hope/ They’re just building bigotry a better rope”). The following "The Hook" is a magnificent acoustic ballad with country-rock flavors and bitter, disillusioned lyrics (“And there’s one thing I tell you friend/ All of our trials gonna come to an end/ And you and I we’re gonna fall/ Like we never have stood on this little earth at all”), while the sixth track, "Soft Wolf Tread," is a solemn, grandiloquent guitar ride worthy of Neil Young at his best.

Political protest resurfaces in "Stars N' Stripes" (“When the earth is ripe/ All the worms wake up/ In their stars and stripes/ And their swastikas”), while the following "Dixie Drug Store" is a bizarre, fun, rhythmic tale set amid the voodoo rites of New Orleans. The volume rises again for the splendid electric ballad "America Snoring" and for the following, magnificent, driving "Grace," the most psychedelic song on Fuzzy, the one closest to the lesson of the Paisley Underground and, through it, to the movement's guiding lights, starting with the Velvet Underground. "Grace" is yet another gem on an album that is simply perfect, a veritable compendium of American rock, played by a tight-knit band in a clear state of grace.

Fuzzy is a timeless masterpiece, earning widespread critical acclaim and only modest commercial success, but which, as had been the case with Shiva Burlesque, turns out to be proudly anachronistic, released at a time when quite different sounds were capturing the attention of the mainstream audience. At the same time, it's immediately clear that such a level of quality would be hard to sustain for long.

Grant Lee Buffalo's second album, titled Mighty Joe Moon, arrives just a year later, a clear sign of the Los Angeles band's creative urgency and state of grace. The record, released on Slash Records, once again recorded at Brilliant Studios in Los Angeles and once again produced by Paul Kimble, comes at the end of months of frenetic live activity that allowed Grant Lee Buffalo to travel the "blue highways" of small-town America, to savor its charm and its deep contradictions, and to reflect its paradoxes and anxieties. All of this wealth of experience is poured into the grooves of an album darker and more introverted than its predecessor, leaner and more tied to the roots of American folk, and it's no coincidence that traditional instruments like mandolin, organ and harmonica frequently surface in the songs.

The album opens with the beautiful, electric, anguished "Lone Star Song," a song that contains references to the Kennedy assassination, mixed with the powerful impression left in April 1993 by the terrible Waco massacre, in which 74 members of the Branch Davidian sect lost their lives at the end of a long FBI siege ("Pray the holy war is ending/ like in the films of Hollywood"). The second track on the record is a sweet, enchanting ballad, "Mockingbirds," which would become Grant Lee Buffalo's biggest hit (complete with an elegant black-and-white video directed by the celebrated Anton Corbijn) but which, despite its soft, muffled atmosphere enriched by old friend Greg Adamson's cello, holds deep anxieties within: the song, in fact, was written by Grant-Lee Phillips in the days immediately following the devastating earthquake that struck Los Angeles on January 17, 1994, and reading through the lyrics it's easy to see as much (“Devastation at last finally we meet/ …/ One day this ground will break/ And open up for me I hope it will I hope it will”).

The album's tracklist continues with the splendid "It's The Life," an acoustic ballad with echoes of the Byrds, telling the bitter reckoning of a life full of lies (“If the life you have created/ Is founded on jealousy and hatred/ It’s too late to ask questions/ For you’re much too old to take any suggestions”). After the driving, electric "Sing Along" and the lovely title track, a gentle ballad that wouldn't have been out of place on the most acoustic, relaxed Neil Young record, we reach one of the album's highest points, the magnificent "Demon Called Deception," a short but intensely powerful electric ride, apparently inspired by the figure of Johnny Cash, dark and gothic in tone with bitter, desperate lyrics (“I’m in tight with a demon called deception/ It’s alright he’s a treating me quite well/ I’m in tight with a demon called deception/ He’s right beside me when I fail”). "Lady Godiva And Me" is a sort of strange Janus: part seductive acoustic folk ballad, part wild and angry.

The rest of the record is a fascinating, almost cinematic journey through the many faces of America, with Grant-Lee Phillips busy sketching evocative, intense vignettes, moving from the lovely "Drag" to the brief pre-war folk interlude of "The Last Days Of Tecumseh," from the bitter reflections of the delicate, aching "Happiness" ("Nevermind me 'cause I've been dead/ Out of my body been out of my head") to the splendid despondency of "Honey Don't Think" (“Something wrong in my stars/ Could you look at my chart/ Help me healing these scars/ Could you learn to read minds/ In the case of mine/ Do you read in the dark”), from the epic, grandiloquent rock of "Side By Side" to the open, pleasant melody of the closing "Rock Of Ages."

Mighty Joe Moon is another excellent album, dense and anguished, deeply steeped in folk and country-rock moods, and, through its return to roots, a paradoxical litmus test of the contradictions and anxieties of contemporary America. The record, carried by "Mockingbirds," achieves modest success, and Grant Lee Buffalo seem by now a step away from commercial consecration, which however will never come; indeed, the band will begin an inevitable, almost physiological downward arc with their next two records.

Copperopolis, Grant Lee Buffalo's third album, recorded at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, arrives in 1996, produced as usual by Paul Kimble and again released on Slash Records. The new album, while still maintaining a thoroughly respectable standard, marks a clear step back from the previous two records. The record's tone (its title referring to a ghost mining town near Stockton, Phillips's hometown) is subdued and melancholic, somehow turned in on itself, almost as if foreshadowing the band's imminent breakup, which would come not long after. Grant-Lee Phillips wrote nearly all the album's songs during breaks in a long tour (also in support of R.E.M. and the Cranberries): the singer himself would later admit that, perhaps, Copperopolis would have needed a slower, more carefully considered gestation, but the band's live commitments and the great expectations riding on the long-awaited new record didn't allow for it.

The album, to be fair, opens wonderfully, with the splendid "Homespun," probably one of the finest songs ever recorded by Phillips and co.: an epic, powerful rock ride in which the theme of political and social protest returns, with references to the terrible Oklahoma City bombing of April 1995, in which 168 people lost their lives (“Suspicion is a powerful religion when it leads to the force on these shores/ In the jungles of the midwest dwarf militia train for war right on course/ Unlike the famous fable revolution won’t yield a firework show/ Unlike the famous fable revolution won’t end on july the fourth”). The tracklist continues with a series of gentle, often melancholic ballads, mostly acoustic: from the pleasant but perhaps not particularly memorable "The Bridge" to the delicately psychedelic ripples of the lovely "Arousing Thunder," perhaps the record's second masterpiece, from the melodic, airy folk atmospheres of "Even The Oxen," enriched by Bob Fergo's violin, to the sincere, direct rock of the catchy "Crackdown."

The search for the roots and founding myths of deep small-town America continues with "Betlehem Steel," dedicated to the famous Pennsylvania steelworks (which, curiously, would go bankrupt not long after, on the threshold of 150 years of history), one of those legendary places where the hard work of generations of nameless heroes helped build America (“Our mother’s father worked here in world war two/ On the main floor operating the drill/ And in his open palms little splinters remind him of/ The booming days of bethlehem steel”). The song, slow and fairly subdued, isn't exactly a radio-friendly track: nonetheless the band wanted it as the album's first single (but Slash, more pragmatically, went with "Homespun").

The rest of the record is basically business as usual, with a few flashes of real class (the fine rock of "Two And Two," the second single pulled from the album, or the refined vocal melodies of "Better For Us," or again the psychedelia of "Comes To Blow").

Overall, Copperopolis is a good record, very refined in its lyrics and song construction, with a handful of beautiful songs unfortunately mixed in with others that are more anonymous and insignificant, weighing down the whole and making the overall level less consistent. Despite its melodic, catchy surface, this is not an easy album, but a work that requires repeated listens and real concentration to be fully appreciated.

A partial disappointment, then, both in terms of critical reception and sales. Something breaks within the band: perhaps there's a sense that Fuzzy and Mighty Joe Moon are unreachable benchmarks, perhaps there's a feeling that once again the band has arrived too late in producing its most classic, clean and straightforward album, right at a time when critical attention is focused on the bare, essential sounds of lo-fi and post-rock. Either way, the upshot is that bassist and producer Paul Kimble decides to leave the band.

Even reduced to a duo, Grant-Lee Phillips and Joey Peters decide to carry on the Grant Lee Buffalo adventure anyway, replacing the departed Paul Kimble with Dan Rotchild and starting work on a new album.

Jubilee, recorded for the usual Slash label at Hollywood's A&M Studios, came out in September 1998. The new production by veteran Paul Fox (who had already worked with Xtc, Robyn Hitchcock and Phish) strips Grant Lee Buffalo's music of the embellishments and uncertainties that had marked the previous album, forging without doubt the Los Angeles band's most direct and immediate record. A sunny, liberating and extremely enjoyable work that, as if to crown the Grant Lee Buffalo story, can count on the additional vocals of such illustrious guests as Michael Stipe, Mark Oliver Everett of Eels and Robyn Hitchcock.

The album opens with the breakneck, electric “APB”, written during a tour with Smashing Pumpkins, before moving on to the amusing and amused non-sense of “Seconds” (“I need a second just to catch my breath/ I need a second wind to blow my wad/ I’ll play the second fiddle second best oh/ Shang lang la”) and the earthy, catchy rock of “Change Your Tune”. The airy crescendo of “Testimony” seems to allude to the songwriter's difficulty in recounting his own life and times (“How can I give a testimony of my time/ When it’s so hard to pen a simple Valentine”), while the scratchy rock of “Truly Truly” tells a far-from-ordinary love story (“I was hanging with some friends/ In the parking lot one night near the summer’s end/ I leaned back against the glass/ Of a car to watch all those speeding comets crash/ It made me think about us”).

There are no particular lulls in the rest of the tracklist, which strings together crackling, lively rock songs (“Fine how’d ya do”, the splendid “My My My”), interspersed with the occasional ballad (“8 Mile Road”, “The Shallow End”) and more acoustic, reflective passages (the folk of “Come To Mama, She Say” and “Everybody Needs A Little Sanctuary”).

In the end the balance sheet is positive: Jubilee is a lively, sparkling record, obviously not comparable in density and complexity to the band's first two albums, but certainly a step forward from the indecision and melancholy of Copperopolis.

Grant Lee Buffalo took a long journey to the roots of American music and ended up as nothing less than an excellent American rock band, solid and tight-knit, with a charismatic frontman and a multifaceted, personal songwriting style. Jubilee might have been a new beginning for Grant-Lee and Joey, but it turned out to be their swan song: the album passed almost completely unnoticed by both audiences and critics, and the band split up for good.

And here the arc of Grant Lee Buffalo comes to a close, one of the most interesting American bands of the Nineties: a story marked by few commercial successes, but extremely rich in artistic meaning. Once the 2000s arrived, Grant-Lee Phillips, despite the substantial indifference of the public, and partly of critics, decided to carry on as a solo artist and keep telling his minimal stories from small-town America: always with his head held high, always proudly out of fashion and out of step with the times. But that's another story, one we hope to return to soon.

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