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Your support makes all the difference.With maybe a little more luck and application, Grandaddy might have been able to make the jump from critics' darlings to commercial success, as The Flaming Lips have done. Both bands deal in a form of whimsical psychedelia whose vulnerability is signalled by their respective frontmen's plaintive vocal tones, but unlike Wayne Coyne, Grandaddy's Jason Lytle clearly found the pop process too demeaning to pursue any further.
"I don't want to work night and day on writing songs that make the young girls cry/Or playing little solos on the keyboards so the kids will ask me how and why," he complains in "Elevate Myself", explaining why he chose to wind the band up prior to this album.
It's a fine swansong from the band nevertheless, with churning psych-rock grooves such as "Jeez Louise" and "Rear View Mirror" sustaining a haunting, hypnotic quality despite wielding substantial power, and a palpable sense of alienation on show in tracks such as "Disconnecty" and "Summer... It's Gone".
Here's hoping that Lytle surmounts his uncertainty about how to proceed, and sets about writing the comeback masterpiece of which fans know he's capable.
DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Jeez Louise', 'Summer... It's Gone', 'Rear View Mirror', 'Elevate Myself'
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