Customer Reviews

Sophtware Slump

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In many respects, the band Grandaddy is endearingly anachronistic. Consisting of 5 men in their 20's and early 30's, they are very unassuming fellows who dress plainly and wear varying (and at times, disturbingly large) amounts of facial hair. They like to do things like skateboard, shoot guns and drink beer. Their music is something like you might find if there was a place where the sounds of the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Neil Young all intersected. On top of it all, their new record, "The Sophtware Slump" is a concept album, one of the mainstays of your typically bad prog-rock outfits, and again harkens to days long since passed. And so you if you haven't heard Grandaddy before, you might read this and wonder wherein then lies the appeal? But this truth of the matter is that this an almost impossibly wonderful, oddly beautiful record. How this is remains something of mystery, yet they pull it off flawlessy. Charisma? Anti-charisma, perhaps? I can't explain.

TSS opens with the ambitious "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot". Against the backdrop of the new millenium, singer Jason Lytle takes stock of the human race: "Adrift again 2000 Man/ You lost your maps / You lost your plans". The song shifts gear several times, veering from uncertainty to cheerful optimism, but ultimately ending in defeat and despair over the plea "Don't give in 2000 man." As the album continues, we find that it's primary theme is technology, and of how it is in danger of spinning out of control, beyond man's abilities to rein it back in. Of how it is shaping (or perhaps more accurately, deforming) the human experience. Consider the epic "Miner At The Dial-A-View", in which a lonely soul visits a facility where he can use a satellite to view distant lovers, friends and family. The concept seems appealing at first, but he ultimately discovers that the experience is poignantly, heartbreakingly empty. He can find his lost love's car, but he can't see her. And with the passage of time, he can no longer recognize the people he is trying to find. The Dial-a-View can let him see, but it cannot let him touch. So he ends up feeling lonelier than ever. His experience mirrors our increasingly online-oriented yet ultimately disconnected existence.

Another theme that is explored is how outdated technology is cast off, and how the resulting detritus is beginning to clog our planet ("Broken Household Appliance National Forest"). And not only that, but what of these disused machines? Do they have souls? When we stop using them, do they end up feeling lonely and rejected? Are they like us? This is wonderfully explored in a pair of songs, "Jed The Humanoid" and "Jed's Other Poem". In the former, the story of Jed is told, a robot built of odds and ends, who is at first celebrated by his creators, and then eventually forgotten. In his despair, Jed ends up trying to emulate his makers, by drinking to try to forget his pain, and is found "all shocked and broken, shut down, exploded." Later, one of the poems Jed had written is discovered and presented by one of his human survivors in song, "Jed's Other Poem", which chillingly begins: "You said I'd wake up dead drunk, alone in the park/ I called you a liar/ but how right you were".

The end result of all this is that the people living among it want to flee. In "The Crystal Lake", the narrator laments having left a bucolic and ostensibly technology-free paradise, and having done so, declares over and over again that "we gotta get out of here" and return to that simpler place. This return-to-nature sentiment is again echoed in the stunningly beautiful "Underneath the Weeping Willow", and the theme of escape is reprised in the closing "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky".

Now of course this is some pretty heady and heavy subject matter. In the hands of a lesser songwriter, it would likely have been an utter disaster. After all, who doesn't remember another rock-and-roll robot by the name of "Mr. Roboto?". But as rendered by Jason Lytle and Grandaddy, this record is a masterpiece. These songs get stuck in your mind like a well-chewed piece of Bazooka Joe can get caught in your hair. The more uptempo numbers, such as "The Crystal Lake" and "Hewlett's Daughter" are driven by chugging guitars, billowing orchestrations, bleeping synth lines, and fragile, REM-state vocals. On slower songs, such as "Weeping Willow", and "Jed's Other Poem" he demonstrates that he is capable of understated but profound beauty. And of course Lytle is wonderfully supported by the rest of his obviously sympathetic bandmates.

In a review of Grandaddy's first LP, I compared them to another of my favorite artists, Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, but said that their songs didn't pack quite the same punch emotionally as those of Linkous. That no longer holds true. "The Sophtware Slump" is a beautiful and heartfelt record, and the band seems to have fully come into their own. Viva Grandaddy!

Grandaddy are one of those bands that don't get "high rotation" on radio or TV. Perhaps this is why when you finally do get to hear them your first reaction can't help but be... why? The Sophtware Slump is quite possibly the album of the year so far from what are quite possibly the most under-rated band of the decade. Blending serious poetry with lo-fi production and anything from gorgeous acoustic guitar to outrageous bleeps and buzzes, The Sophtware Slump is a refreshing pocket of brilliance in an increasingly souless landscape. Highlights include; "The Crystal Lake" with its crazy electronic scales and touching lyrics, the big guitar fuzz of "Broken Household Appliance National Forest" and the piercing "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot" which finishes with the lyrics "Don't give in 2000 man." Grandaddy are quite possibly destined to remain an enigma and perhaps this is what makes them so special. But at the end of the day there just aren't enough bands our there with the level of uniqueness and intensity that Grandaddy maintain seemingly effortlessly. This album is a treasure. It restores your faith in music. Get it.

Laid-back band Grandaddy, from Modesto California, reached their pinnacle in their 2000 "Sophtware Slump." A mix of spacey keyboards and dreamy space-folk, "Slump" is one of those rare albums you can just lie on your bed and listen all the way through, hypnotized.

It starts off with the gentle space ditty "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot," a lament that "they" (aliens?) have all the maps and plans. There's a more power-poppy sound to "Hewlett's Daughter" and the shimmery "Crystal Lake," which keeps Grandaddy from sounding too melancholy.

But despite the poppier songs, the middle of this is the unsettled, spacey sound of songs like "Jed the Humanoid," which starts with crickets and a rocket blasting off, or the soft piano-driven "Under the Weeping Willow." Grandaddy show their rock-ier side in the middle of "Broken Household Appliance National Forest," where the fuzz guitar roars out. Then it lapses back into balladic space-songs, finishing up with the ethereal, windy "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky."

Few albums are half as deservedly praised as "Sophtware Slump" is. The sound is so complex that it takes a few listens to fully absorb, yet you can listen to it and instantly be drawn in. Certainly songs that sound like a depressed robot wrote them are worth listening to, and "Sophtware Slump" will have you hooked before you realize it.

The percussion and guitar riffs are kept low-key and folky, and the bass only really lets rip occasionally. Backing up the guitar and percussion are the synths, which sound like an addled robot made them. It gives a spacey feel to the folky melodies. Not to mention the gentle keyboard of "Under the Weeping Willow" and "Jed the Humanoid." And lacing the edges are the sounds of rocket blastoffs and landings, soft female vocals, crickets, and wind blowing.

Jason Lytle has one of those sensitive voices that the best indie rockers have. And he can really sing with feeling, whether being playful or wistful. And the songwriting is beautiful, full of longing and optimism. "I want to sleep/Underneath the weeping willow/As it cries all night quietly... I'll sleep there so soundly/Until I'm allowed finally/To wake and be happy again."

Grandaddy reached an artistic pinnacle in "Sophtware Slump," the sort of album that most indie rockers can only dream of creating. Ethereal, sweet, sad, and entrancing.

...it's just so beautiful. When I try to describe it to someone, I always revert to "OK Computer plus Twin Peaks". Sometimes, when I'm listening to this, I just can't believe someone could create such an album like this one.

From the start, things are good. The 9-minute intro, "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot" starts with an echo-y strumming of a guitar and background noises (birds and electric hums) growing and then cutting off, and then growing and then cutting off. Quite an effect. The intro to the intro ends with someone saying over a radio, "Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4," and then the piece swoops into the fabulous meat of the song, which is lush and full, absolutely packed with electric noises and strumming guitars and the wonderful voice of the lead singer. Somewhere along the 3-minute mark, plinky pianos break the song and suddenly the vocals come through clear and unreverberated, and it's just wonderful.

"He's Simple" carries on for five more minutes, with slow electric violins and the tapping of a cymbal...the piano and the vocals and-...the wonderful orchestration, symphonisation, is just incredible, with backing vocals appearing and flowing over the tune in just the right pitch. I don't think this song could possibly be improved, even after listening to it fourty or fifty times, it just comes off flawlessly every single time. A lengthy synth solo, in the wrong hands, would bring the whole song crashing to the ground, but Grandaddy manages every detail with such finesse, you'd think they were professionals in a multi-million dollar studio with Alan Parsons at the controls.

As the first track fades, "Hewlitt's Daughter" leaps from the speakers, with the singer's voice displaying a sort of Northwestern accent (think Pete Martell, from Twin Peaks, of "Wrapped in plastic" fame). Twangy keyboards bubble along here, supporting the tapping percussion and the happy vocals.

"Jed The Humanoid" fades in with dark piano, electric noises, and a rocket ship taking off through a crackly speaker, it seems. The vocals are softer here than they were in "Hewlitt's". He sings of a robot he and his friends or family built, neglected, and eventually abandoned. The lyrics here are magnificent, with wonderful use of repetition by what sounds like the robot himself. The music here balances on the edge of being distastefully sad, in comparison to the absolutely sunny "Hewlitt's" that precedes. A woman's vocals supplement the strumming and the electric noises beautifully as Jed's owners pay him less attention, and Jed discovers alcohol, and he "Fizzled and popped, he rattled and knocked, fin'lly he just stopped..." Electric noises fade the song to a close.

Suddenly, "The Crystal Lake" pops up from the void and bounces along to happy twinkling keyboards. The way the singer says words like "Duraflames" and "chandelier" in this are just fabulous, and hark back to the "wrapped in plastic" tone of "Hewlitt's". The singer, who's lost his way somehow and somewhere, is accompanied by a splashing brook that's nearly overtaken by the happy guitars and piano and it almost seems as if the sun might burst through your CD player at any moment and shower you with candy and bunnies, even though the lyrics go "I gotta get outta here". The song is just effortlessly wonderful, indescribable. Dark electric guitars flood in towards the end and I wonder how anyone could go through life without hearing this album.

"Chartsengrafs" fades in as "Crystal Lake" fades out, with people crunching through dried leaves and gritty guitars and synthesizer bubbles. Suddenly, the music bursts into your ears and the singer seems angry, without shouting or yelling. Annoyed, perhaps. This song is a defenite grinding shift against the current of the rest of the album, rather like rafting down a fairly peaceful river and suddenly being sucked into rapids. Still, I couldn't think of a Sophtware Slump without Chartsengrafs.

"Underneath The Weeping Willow" fades in with piano noises, everywhere, and the singer comes in...and it's perfectly mellow, sad, wistful. It almost puts the listener right in with the singer, who wants to be able to just fall asleep and wake up happy, away from the sadness he encounters in everyday life.

"Broken Household Appliance National Forest" comes in with happy little electric noises, and until the singer's voice pops up, the song is completely electronic. When the vocals do appear, they're calm, happy, peaceful...with some lovely rhymes about salamanders and conduits. Suddenly, harsh guitars come through and the song shifts from a meadow to Chartsengrafs. The guitars continue for a while, then...they fade, and a second verse about bunnies on toasters fades in, and stays until the guitars make another appearance. I can't say I truly love this song like I do the others. I love the more peaceful parts about the deer in the laundromat, but the guitar bits grate on me...I suppose I'm not too good with such sudden contrast in music. However, once the guitars roll past the three minute mark, it's all good, with a really terrific solo and crashing drums along the way to the end.

"Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)" (apparently) features lyrics by Jed himself. He sings about drinking, about past regrets, and it's easy to paint a picture of such a sad individual. The music is dark, and has a gritty, hopeless feeling, thanks to the synthesizer's low drone in the background. This is a very minor-key song, and understandibly so...any song about Jed should be. Somewhere towards the end the music fades to a vaguely nautical piano piece with "aaah"-ing vocals, and it's just lovely.

The song shifts to the amazing "E. Knievel Interlude", which features a soft, crackly fire, a tocking clock, extremely low synthesizer noises, and a peaceful, beautiful keyboard bit. One of the most striking pieces of the album, really...sad, wonderful...sometimes, I swear I can hear a TV on low in the background. The song fades out and the next song fades in on the same note, which is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful effect.

"Miner At The Dial-A-View" is relentlessly beautiful. A miner, looking back through the Dial-A-View, cannot find his friends, his beloved...some amazing, amazing vocals and lyrics here, and this song-...knocks me off my feet every time I hear it. Practically a religious experience, listening to it. Also, it features the most Twin-Peaks-ian mood of all the songs...it has interludes with a woman speaking instructions on the Dial-A-View, and somehow, it works. Relentlessly beautiful, just non-stop, amazing. This actually makes me cry, at the end, when I'm focused on it. The very end sends chills up my spine whenever I hear it. A dreamy song...one of the best.

"So You'll Aim For The Sky" picks up where "Miner" ends...and starts with whistling wind, and background radio rocket-related broadcasts, and beeps, and then the song begins, and I just want to die, it's so beautiful. I don't use the term "Heavenly" to describe a lot of things, but in this case, it is. It is completely heavenly, so well-orchestrated, with such grace, such beauty...so utterly wistful, emotional, it sweeps you along, with lush violins and high-flying vocals. So smooth. As it fades out, a small exchange takes place between a man and a woman, and then it is followed by one of the most perfect endings to any song I know, to any album, in fact. Piano, wind...so beautiful...the total deconstruction of mankind.

So all in all?

The album carries the listener over a wide sweeping epic journey in an incredibly short time, with no filler and only one or two blemishes (however, those can change based on the musical taste of the listener). Similarities can be easily drawn to many albums. To me, it reminds me most of OK Computer, as I stated before. Not similar by way of sounding the same, but similar in that they are both epic and speak of the dangers of modern society, and the hopelessness one can feel when lost in it. However, OK Computer is far more polished and glistening than The Sophtware Slump. The latter is very earthy and textured, while the former could slip by if you didn't listen very hard. A difference occurs here, although this is based on my opinion: whereas OK Computer's two ending songs have a sense of tiredness and are somewhat flat, with nothing to really grip for the listener, The Sophtware Slump's two ending songs are two of the best songs on the album, and the deconstruction ending of Slump, in my opinion, is far better than the great-but-not-good-enough triangle ting of OK.

In the end, The Sophtware Slump remains, to me, a pinnacle in modern music and indie rock, with sweeping vocals and wonderful orchestration, and such a down-to-earth texture about it. I can't help but place it among my favorite albums...and I still can't believe this album actually exists...

-Alfred Erickson

From the swirling, 8 minute opening track "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot" to the farewell of the last song "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky," Grandaddy's third LP shows not only a much higher level of maturity, but makes a beautiful statement about our technological society. Most like Radiohead's OK Computer, The Sophtware Slump adds a warmth and lightness to the otherwise apocalyptic message where robots drown themselves in alcohol and friends can be viewed far away through machines. Amazingly, in an album shaped with synthesizers and loops, there's an unshakably human feel. Jason Lytle's lyrics, earnest and well-crafted, are especially, standout on "Jed the Humanoid," "Jed's Other Poem" and "Miner ar the Dial-a-View." "Miner"'s optimistic ending sums up the album's atmosphere: "I know it's gonna take some time/I'm going home someday/I dream...."

For pity's sake!
Reading the average Grandaddy review can really make yer brain bleed, y'know? The breath of fresh air Grandaddy offers in a genuinely dispassionate musical era seems to get [pulled] in and exhaled by many reviewers in the forms of names. I've heard them all, from Abba to Young, a desperate, nearly frantic NEED to find a box, a container into which Grandaddy will fit. It's not necessarily a bad thing. In many ways it's a coping mechanism, because it's kind of embarrasing to just rush into a friends house with a copy of "Sophtware" wide-eyed and just gaping and lurching and stammering out how he/she jut really, really needs to listen to it RIGHT NOW. It's nice to be able to just meander in and say, "Hey, man. Got this new album. It's kinda like the Pearly Nipples crossed with DoJo ToGo, but with, like, hints of Crimean Wave, ShockShell, Pornoboy 11, and Zeke's Coaster." It makes you feel stronger. It makes you feel smarter. It makes you feel safer. The implied inference (i.e., why do you need to feel stronger, smarter and safer?) is a little dicier to understand.
There is a reason for all of the hot air, a reason these defenses flail around so heavily laden. Continuing the tradition of "Under the Western Freeway", Grandaddy's "Sophtware Slump" doesn't freely vend out feelings of strength or smarts, and definitely not security. It is, in fact, from the standpoint of musical theory, a pretty dangerous piece of work that pirouettes on the edges of cacophony only to pitch forward, twitching, into black pools of indefinable harmonic hooks. It sloughs onto the mainland, boneless and ragged, one eye slanted tenuously towards the assymetric sky, only to melt jaggedly into the air vents of an Alfa Romeo heading towards somewhere... probably Reseda. Try telling that to your buddy (or spouse, or lover, or editor), when you want to tell people about the fact that Grandaddy sounds like just about nobody else out there except maybe, well, Grandaddy.
So you do what you have to do. You throw in names and numbers. Things that you can identify within the Grandaddy umbrella that they will be able to identify with you so you can identify them with Grandaddy. Or Vice Versa. You do it cool, and downplay the band and the music. You wait for the right time, lying in the weeds, whispering things like, "Byrne & Floyd"..."Waits & 'Head"..."Blank & Blank" (which, incidentally, would be a good title for their next real album).
In the end, though, why do you do it? If you're like me, you do it because you hear it and you need someone nearby you to tell you that it really is as good as you think it is. (And here, I'm speaking freely about both "Freeway" and "Slump", the two albums I have heard from Grandaddy). You do it because you've gotten tired of going to sleep listening to it and waking up without anyone there to talk about the dreams you had while it infiltrated your subconscious. You do it because you hear, "What's so Funny about Peace, Love, and Understanding", after listening to G-Daddy and pay attention to the whole song, and never once try to waylay it with a timely fart. You do it so that your heart won't break.
You do it to feel stronger, you do it to feel smarter, you do it to feel safe.

Let me start this review by saying something to those who have yet to hear anything by this great, great band: Nothing, but nothing, can prepare you for the cheek-hurtingly large grin that you will don the first time you hear 'The Crystal Lake', the fourth track of this superb album from one of the world's most underrated bands.
Starting with the very long, but very brilliant 'He's simple, he's dumb, he's the pilot', 'The Sophtware Slump' is an album which is surprisingly simple to review. It is just full of fantastic songs. I must have listened to this album at least seventy times (you may think that is sad, I refer to it as 'Artistic appreciation en mass'), and I am still to find any major flaws in the 11 songs.
'Hewlett's daughter' is a song that will delight you the first time you hear it (a bit like a mcflurry), while 'Jed the humanoid's depressing tune and simple, but effective lyrics could make you feel genuinely sad that a fictional robot made in some guys kitchen died of an alcohol problem (you wouldn't have thought a robot would have a liver).
We then move to 'The Crystal Lake', which despite my introduction, isn't my favourite song on the album. The consistency and diversity of the songs is astounding, and if anything else, this LP will renew your faith in mixing acoustic instruments with electronic techno sounds.
Despite my obvious (yet unsafe) love of this album, I can see why it wouldn't be for everyone. Jason Lytle's VERY american voice may annoy some, and the lyrics (which, I admit, I don't usually care that much about) about mankinds increasing interest to build bigger and better machines in this scientific world struck a particular chord with me, even if that's not at all what the guy meant when he wrote these songs.
Never-the-less, it has been a constant threat to the CD's in my stereo for nearly 5 years now, and I still feel inclined to recommend it to complete strangers in the street now and again.
Try it, You just might find a wee gem in this little album.

I don't have too much ground to break with this review, I mostly wanted to confirm the prevailing opinion that Grandaddy is beautiful, dreamy, chill, (somewhat ironically) futuristic music. Grandaddy sounds little bit indie and a little bit alternative - think Beck's tone with Radiohead-style production and technophobia and a dash of Flaming Lips.

As an album, Sophtware is particularly outstanding because of its coherent, over-riding technological/alienation themes which permeate not only the lyrics (which I find very compelling) and stories, but every detail, from the sound effects to the entire tone. Unlike Radiohead's more brooding, politicized and aggressive take on similar themes, Sophtware approaches its subject matter with a sort of sad resignation.

For example, "Jed the Humanoid" and "Jed's Other Poem" present us with the title character, Jed, a synthetic being capable of emotions and poetry, but wrought with problems ranging from feelings of inadequacy ("I try to sing funny like Beck / but it's bringing me down") to alcoholism and suicidal thoughts. He is in many ways tragic; he is unappreciated, disused and ultimately abandoned by his creators. But his tragedy endows him with a very human dignity.

The same theme of our ever-blurring concepts of mechanization and humanity are continued in the contrast between "The Crystal Lake" (of youth) and the "Broken Household Appliance National Forest" (of the present). These same songs also trace more universal themes: personal growth and change; youth and age; idealized memories; etc.

Ultimately, in The Sophtware Slump Grandaddy paints a beautiful sonic picture of a bleak future-present.

Grandaddy are afraid of robots. They worry about what will happen to us as we become more and more dependent upon computers (see also the Flaming Lips ca. "Yoshimi")
The album, while being rather long, maintains its focus and doesnt seem to contain any filler material. Starting off with a bang "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot" sets the pace for the album. Rock music under layers of electronics , vocal blurbs ("ready? okay") and a catchy rhythm. Another great track is "National Forest" where a field of broken household appliances are now being inhabited by various animals. The highlights of the record though are the Jed poems. The first drones on about the creation of a humanoid who begins to feel neglected and dies miserable. the follow up is a poem he wrote before he died. He had become an alcoholic and was sharply sensitive. That doesnt sound so great but the songs are fantastic. Trust me.

2000man

It's great to see a gem like the "Sophtware Slump" from Grandaddy come from the good ol' USA rather than the UK. The band's nucleus, Jason Lytle, hopefully has lots of good art yet to spew and won't go the unfortunate route of other well-known, west-coast musical prodigies. You know who I'm speaking of.
Several songs from the "Sophtware Slump" elicit the words, "hauntingly beautiful", though disgustingly cliche. (Songs such as "Crystal Lake", "Jed's Other Poem" and "Dial-A-View" come to mind.) Most every song has an electronic loop that brilliantly stirs the senses enough to get maximum hook by just skirting annoyance. This is one of those albums that requires many spins before it is truly appreciated, which always makes for the best musical experience.
People like to compare Grandaddy with Radiohead and, in terms of caliber, I suppose that's fair but Grandaddy explores the outer fringes much more; it's perhaps the most unique music I've heard.

Music usually caters to mood so if you're feeling mellow and cerebral late at night or on a long road trip, this album delivers. Along with the likes of "Never Mind", "Dirt", "Sublime", "OK Computer", "Weezer" and "Throwing Copper", the "Sophtware Slump" is a necessary addition to a complete CD collection.