33 rebellions per minute
"It's just that I am unorganized, and want to find you when something good happens"
1998
Grandaddy, UNDER THE WESTERN FREEWAY
I think the most influential ideology behind 1990's indie rock has been the worship of the slacker. The influence preceeds the '90's, of course, with the Ramones and Replacements as key messiahs. It is in the '90's, though, that the desire to sound ragged and unfinished has spread so far that it shapes the sound even of obvious studio geeks like Jason Lytle. UNDER THE WESTERN FREEWAY, his band's first nationally distributed album (I think there was a local California precursor, wouldn't swear to it), is full of elegant little touches crafted with obvious care. "Non-phenomenal Lineage" opens the album with a synthesizer melody like that optional phone setting where every key you dial calls up a different Gregorian monk tone. "AM 180"'s main hook purifies a music-box tone into the child's-party noisemakers of the angels. "Collective Dreamwish of Upperclass Elegance" opens with someone shaking out his metal blanket in approximately 5.5/4 time, which doesn't even exist. "Summer Here Kids" rings out with grand piano chords. "Laughing Stock" invents a noir-worthy mechanical echo sound and has fake choir. The title track backs a gorgeous woodwind melody with the bizarre machine cyclings of a video action game centered on attack laundry. "Everything Beautiful Is Far Away" has the deranged mutterings of a grumpy Fisher-Price gnome and a variety of elusive treble noises whizzing by. "Why Took Your Advice" has a synth part that could pass for a Joe Satriani guitar-whiz track (or maybe it is guitar?), and pays close attention to how it mikes the piano.
All this surrounds an overall sound that nonetheless comes closest to a cross between the weirdly pretty, disheveled alt-country of Sparklehorse, and what early Sebadoh would've sounded like if Lou Barlow had already started finishing his hidden pop songs. Lytle's vocals are high-pitched, strained, show only general familiarity with the concept of "on-pitch", shriek unforgivably on "Summer…", and could basically pass for Stephen Malkmus's with little difficulty. The guitar strumming would seem half-baked in most contexts, if there weren't little moments like the flashy feedback solo of "Lawn and So On", and volume switches from back-porch folk to heavier guitar (see "Collective…") fail to steal Nirvana's formula only because that would take too much visible effort. The song titles, in classic Nirvana/ Smashing Pumpkins fashion, only rarely appear in the lyrics, and are only sometimes even explained by them. "Poisoned at Hartsy Thai Food" is a great joke, but a joke nonetheless, condensing the Doors' "The End" (theme from Apocalypse Now) into 72 seconds about bad food. FREEWAY is a hi-fi album playing earnest masquerade.
Then again, what else should it sound like? Lytle writes like someone raised to believe the finest promises of futurism, gleaming space cities and robot cars whizzing you through the sky at 220 mph, and then the future turns out to be $3.95 gift items made by Chinese 8-year-olds, and he reserves the right to grumble. Pizza Hut decided not to purchase from NASA the several hundred million dollars worth of moonrock needed to make the moon display their logo visibly from earth, but they inquired very seriously, and someone will eventually shell out: "Go progress chrome/ they paint the moon today/ some brand new future color/ I aim to shoot the scaffolds/ I like it how it's always been". They have their astronaut song, but unlike Major Tom their astronaut gets to settle down on his new planet, and it's even more lonely there. "Tourist Info said I'd have a good time", complains "Summer…". Grandaddy's sounds are slightly less accessible, but no less compelling, for failing to gleam, and gleam has too often been the sound of dishonesty, the sonic version of a suit and tie. I can't imagine that "the results are back/ now it's time to pack/…/ seems you came up rather short of the average sort" was generally directed at Lytle (for one thing, there's plenty of room in the business world for computer geeks), but even gifted hands can refuse to belong to a world where "only gifted hands will receive the chance to touch down on fortune". For every cracked note where I wish FREEWAY was less of a concession to slackdom, there's an epiphany like "AM 180"'s devoted pledge: "we'll sit for days and talk about things important to us like whatever/ we'll defuse bombs, walk marathons, and take on whatever together". Trailing off into rough edges and blurry lines because you're incompetent, that's fair but annoying. Doing so with an aesthete's care and timing, though, that's a freedom, the freedom to allow uncertainty, to be fought for with more energy than indie cool can allow anyone to reveal.
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