granddaddy - the sophtware slump

this was my favourite album back in about 2003, and i have revisited it lately quite a bit. it's great.

two things i love about this album - the concept: the degradation of modern technology in general, as well as the disconnect it brings and more specifically being about the abandonment and eventual breakdown of their computer/robot, nicknamed jeddy 3. yes, i know, stick with me... and the execution: as regards instrumentation, so very odd. like a mix of heavy, countryish rock and synths. thinks radiohead meets neil young circa trans.

people often mention this album in the same sentence as OK computer but this is actually a better album IMO.

granddaddy were a fairly underrated band :(

I played the shit out of this record and the first one(fucking amazing as well), nice memories...

saw them on this tour and they were great....

but the record after 'The Sophtware Slump' wasn't that good.....

now the lead singer/song-writer(Jason Lytle) is doing solo work that I haven't heard, might be good....

he seemed to be the backbone of the band...

loved it. probably listen to it once a year now. great album but 'am 180' is their best track

most IDM christmas song ever

"the crystal lake" is such a good track. their last album was great as well, too bad they broke up.

  zaphod said:

"the crystal lake" is such a good track. their last album was great as well, too bad they broke up.

it's true

i made a grandaddy thread like a month ago and no one responded

I really really like Jeds Other Poem, I like all the stuff Ive heard by them but that song is so dreamy to me. Ima gonna listen to all their stuff in hopes of finding another song I grow to love as much as that one.

Great album.

The coda for 'He's simple, hes dumb, he's the pilot' is beautiful.

See also entry 19 here:

http://www.cracked.com/article_15765_20-mo...baby-names.html

this is one of my favorite albums. it's one of those albums that doesn't have a bit of surplus and every idea fits perfectly. every track is great and, as you suggest Kaini, the themes of the album are beautiful and compelling.

Jason Lytle has a knack for writing songs that make heroes out of losers, identifying the sadness, loneliness but resulting beauty that can be found in everyday life.

Their next album, Sumday is also great. It's not a start to finish masterpiece like the Sophtware Slump, but it has some really great songwriting. I'm On Standby imposes the aforementioned despair onto the shoulders of a worker bot. The Group Who Couldn't Say is a fantastic tale of some office drones that discover the beauty of a day outside for the first time, trying desperately to reconcile what they find outdoors with the world of office supplies and quarterly reports with which they are more familiar ("her drag and click had never yielded anything as perfect as a dragonfly" or "Darryl 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").

But the Sophtware Slump will surely be regarded as their finest moment. It's an environmental record that appreciates without getting preachy. While music is an odd mix, the songs are full of strange and beautiful images, like blown out tires on federal roads that look just like crash-landed crows or the eerie beauty of the Broken Household Appliance National Forest.

Jason Lytle's solo album, Yours Truly, The Commuter, drops this July. It's being passed around now in advance. It definitely sounds like Grandaddy, with an emphasis on the quieter songs like Aim Toward the Sky or Okay With My Decay.

yeah sumday is extremely underrated, imo. just like this band. there's some great pop music on that album. "now it's on" and "yeah is what we had" are both vintage grandaddy.

and i think the comparison to radiohead is lazy. they sound absolutely nothing alike.

i think a lot of that comparison is because this album came out around the same time as ok computer, and they have semi-similar themes

also granddaddy supported radiohead on the ok computer tour

i think the comparison made more sense when the two albums came out (2000-ish), but less so over time.

they do explore similar themes, so it's definitely valid from that perspective. but, they really approach it from different angles and use different palettes.

edit: as the Sophtware Slump approaches being 10 years old, I hope Geffen are following other lables' lead and preparing an anniversary deluxe edition. the b-sides that were recorded around this time were amazing. (Moe Bandy Mountaineers, Wives of Farmers, Wonder Why in LA, Our Dying Brains, etc.)

well, i dunno. sophtware slump came out three years after ok computer, so not really the same time. but i see what you're saying.

i like the broken down comforter collection, there's some good songs on that as well.

haven't listened to this album in a few years, but it was one of my favorites for a long time. their first album was great as well. 'sumday' didn't move me as much, but it was ok. haven't followed them after that. i'm gonna download this and listen again. thanks for the reminder!

  LOL Alzado said:

http://grandaddy.noxxus.com/

woo! nice one.

  kaini said:

this is fantastic

it's an Apple ][ and as far as i can tell it's just a camera pointed at one running a BASIC program (and the last command is LIST!)

of the vids i posted, it's the only one sanctioned by the band

fucking awesome

i was trying to think of what it reminds me of... and it just hit me. the equally awesome end credits of portal!

thanks for reminding, dug this one heavily about 6-7 years ago...playing it now.

air conditioners in the woods

man, dont think ive heard of either the band or their albums, but gonna check them out properly after the youtube posts/recommendations/whatever you cal lthis thread.

Here's the bulk of their discography (excluding early self released stuff) with my own rating:

• 1997 Under the Western Freeway (4.5/5)
• 1999 Signal to Snow Ratio EP (4/5)
• 2000 The Sophtware Slump (5/5)
• 2003 Sumday (4/5)
• 2005 Excerpts from the Diary of Todd Zilla EP (2.5/5)
• 2006 Just Like the Fambly Cat (3.5/5)

• 2009 Yours Truly, The Commuter (Jason Lytle solo) (4/5)

this list also does not include the several "EP's" that were released (glorified cd singles) that contain countless quality b-sides.

I used to love them back in the day, bought this and sumday on CD but lost all my music from F-L on my Hard Drive and totally forgot to get some of it back. Just realised this with Grandaddy after a few years so I've downloaded everything again (along with a load of Kyuss I've missed). Gonna play the hell out of it, and I always preferred Sumday, like someone said it's much more of a great pop album

listened to this and sumday a few times back when they were released and for some reason, didn't come back to it and forgot about it.

am re-listening now and loving it. thanks for the reminder!