My favorite album of the year 2003: Grandaddy’s “Sumday”
It never ceases to amaze me that so many people I know think today’s music sucks. If we’re to believe the opinions of most of our acquaintances (not to mention scads of American rock critics in the year-end roundups), every single year since 1997 has been, without a doubt, the absolute worst year in popular music history. Granted, the ever-expanding corporate grip on commercial radio doesn’t bode well for our ears – I mean, have you ever met anybody who actually likes 3 Doors Down and Jagged Edge?
Sometimes you have to look beyond your local top 40 station to find the best stuff out there. That’s not to say that anybody who considers himself a music fan should ignore what goes on in the mainstream – Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” and “The Way You Move” still occupy the top two spots on the Billboard Hot 100, which is proof enough of the listening public’s enduring good judgment. But much of the best music I bought this year came from bands I’d never heard before, and best of all was the third album by Grandaddy, a Modesto, California quintet fronted by an ex-professional skateboarder.
Grandaddy’s “Sumday” opens with what sounds like a little girl’s voice saying “click” over and over, accompanied by some squawks and white noise. Cue drum pattern, muted guitars and some gorgeous harmonies and we’re off. Singer Jason Lytle conveys the bewilderment and wonder of a traveler who can’t find his bearings but is relishing every moment of the journey anyway. The album has been compared by some to the Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” but the difference is that, unlike the utopian stoners in the Lips, Grandaddy’s got real songs. You know – verses, choruses, melodies. And songs count for a helluva lot more than you might think.
Apparently, music fans recognize Grandaddy’s newfound mastery of song form (or else the $9.99 price tag and bonus video feature had their intended effect on sales), because “Sumday” is the group’s first charting album, making its debut at #83 on the Billboard 200. Critics haven’t taken quite so warmly to the record; it only appears on one magazine’s year-end best list (Blender’s, if you were wondering) that I’m aware of, and they’re only at a measly number 25.
A common complaint among critics is that all of Grandaddy’s songs sound the same and that there simply isn’t enough variety to sustain interest. I would counter that the album needs to be heard several times before it truly sinks in. Unlike many records, “Sumday” reveals itself slowly. After all, many of the best records need time to be appreciated. Once “Sumday” reveals itself to the listener, it never stops giving. A few listens to Grandaddy’s first two albums reveals that, with “Sumday,” the group has truly come into its own.
Singer Jason Lytle’s meta-theme, oddly enough, is the 1990’s tech boom and its effect on American life. The theme doesn’t permeate every song like on 2000’s “The Sophtware Slump.” But on Sumday, Lytle handles his subject with the kind of effortless grace that had previously eluded him. His characters inhabit the stuffy cubicles and meeting rooms of the Silicon Valley, daydreaming and wondering if they’ll ever get away from the mind-numbing grind of dot-com culture.
On “The Group Who Couldn’t Say,” for instance, a gaggle of office drones ventures into the outside world for the first time. Apparently the change of scenery is too much to bear, as Lytle illustrates: “Daryl couldn’t talk at all / He wondered how the trees had grown to be so tall / He calculated all the height and width and density for insurance purposes.”
Lytle gets away with his swipes at corporate culture and information-age hegemony because, unlike, say, Radiohead, he’s never imperious, he doesn’t use the band’s big vague spacious sound for egoist grandstanding (i.e. Coldplay or most any “emo” band you’d care to name), and because he can be pretty damned funny. His pain seems refreshingly ordinary, whether felt through the eyes of a laid-off tech worker or through the recounting a failed relationship. So when he wonders “What have I become?” over baroque piano crescendos on closing track “The Final Push to the Sum,” what comes to mind isn’t Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” but something altogether more modest. It’s the rare rock-and-roll band that can convey personal loss without seeming self-absorbed or pretentious. With “Sumday,” Grandaddy proves they are just such a band.
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