-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
Artist..: Grass House
Album...: A Sun Full And Drowning
GENRE....: Indie
STYLE....: Indie Rock, Folk, Americana
LABEL....: Marshall Teller SCENE.....: 2016-02-19
BITRATE..: 921 kbps avg STORE.....: 2013-00-00
ENCODER..: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V TRACKS....: 10
SIZE.....: 259.1MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://www.facebook.com/GrassHouseuk/
- TRACKLIST
1 Spinning As We Turn 4:13
2 Of Haste And Art 3:22
3 Faun 3:33
4 And Now For The Wild 3:29
5 And The Colours In The Light May 3:46
Obscure
6 Wild And In Love 3:23
7 I Was A Streetlight 4:34
8 Tasteless And Taciturn 3:34
9 A Thousand Generators 5:06
10 Avocado Eyes 4:16
Total Playtime: 39:16
Grass House sheathes the comfort of weathered Americana in glittery
space-rock atmospherics. Modest, monochrome melodies weave through cavernous
reverbed spaces, whiskery poetics are murmured as dual guitars vault up and
away in rattling blurs. The four piece, native to Yorkshire but now living in
London, has drawn comparisons to various baritone indie folk (Nick Cave, Tom
Waits, Matt Berninger of the National), but to me, the singer, Liam Palmer,
sounds like a younger, less damaged Shane McGowan, muttering bleak
abstractions but softening the edges with a Northern burr.
This is Grass HouseÆs first album though singles ôSpinning as We Turnö and
ôAnd Now for the Wildö got the band a certain amount of attention earlier
this year. Both have been reshaped for the full-length, adding weight and
heft and clarity. ôAnd Now for the Wildö starts in restrained, a chink of
closed cymbals, a steady chant of vocals, the main bit of color coming from
the way that one guitar dives in from the corners, swooping over the main
picked riff and then spinning off again. PalmerÆs voice beautifully deep,
hollowed out and cracked like old leather, the melody modest, settled,
comfortable and entirely without pyrotechnic leaps or odd turns. Yet as it
goes on, the song builds layered textures, a high vibrating guitar tone, the
rumble of malleted toms, the hint of altered vocals. ItÆs a song that reaches
high and strikes towards ecstasy, while also acknowledging the risk of a
fall. Says Palmer, ôThough Icarus he made mistakes, weÆll bind our wings with
stronger tape, weÆll fill our heads with empty space, and now for the wild.ö
Lyrics on this album are dense, abstract, arresting but not quite readable,
strings of words that sound good until you try to make sense of them. ôCome
with fruit peel, come with bags of leaves, tantalizing finger strokes and
green limousines,ö Palmer urges in ôFaun,ö one of the discÆs best, conjuring
simultaneously the clarity and detail of a Dutch still life, the surreal
nonsense of a Dali painting. The new single has the taffy-stretching reality
of a fever dream, as Palmer imagines himself first a streetlight, then a
phone booth. It has the albumÆs catchiest melody, but what, if anything,
could it possibly mean? And yet, the good lines are remarkable. ôThe world
will make cuckolds of us all.ö ôKeep a good half of your face behind a veil
to play it safe.ö Palmer luxuriates in words, spitting them out in
multi-syllabled, ambiguous tangles, shades them with charcoal cross-hatchings
of submerged emotion, and leaves us, finally, to make sense of them. Or not.
Yet even at its most opaque, Sun Full and Drowning connects subliminally,
with its deep reassurances of folk-rock melody, its shimmering, vibrating
intersections of interstellar guitar, its grand sonic spaces. You donÆt need
to know exactly whatÆs going on or what everything means to be carried along.
Sometimes itÆs best just to let it go.
*
Grass House make terribly convincing Americana for a handful of Londoners.
Although, to be fair, geography and generational relativity differ very
little when it comes to musical tasteùjust as a 12-year-old from Nebraska can
download the entire Beatles catalogue, so can a couple of UK lads can grow up
in a household teeming with the sonic legacies of Captain Beefheart, Tom
Waits, and Johnny Cash.
On their first full-length, A Sun Full and Drowning, Grass House take on the
raw and rootsy musical content their name implies, digging up dirt and
brightly-colored flowers. The singer opts for a harsh baritone at all times,
complimenting the ever-bass-driven orientation of the song melodies. And
while bass and the the vocals pull all the reigns, the guitar appears often
as anything but one. And while the band likes to dwell down low, and myriad
senses of the term, their full-length is replete with way more sunshine than
their previous singles and EPs would suggest.
Commanding the focus of each song is singer Liam Palmer. His vocal presence
is a crude Rorshach amalgamation of such deep-voiced song-suitors as Nick
Cave, Matt Berninger, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, and Johnny Cash û each emerging
when needed. With a lyrical verbosity that insists upon its own poetic
timing to a point of near-melodic aversion, a comparison to the former two
references is apt.
CaveÆs fingerprints also show up in the percussive instrumental dynamism in
song stand-outs like ôAnd Now For the Wildö and ôFaun.ö On the former,
PalmerÆs refrain is met by machine gun-like high-hat raps, while the verse is
treated to drippy Chris Isaac guitar mirages. öFaunö is easily the albumÆs
most direct song, wasting no time at 3 and a half minutes, and playing out
like an evil Roy Orbison tune (itÆs even got the timpani cadences of ôYou Got
Itö). Instead of OrbisonÆs soft croon, however, is a vicious snarl that
rides this song like a well-tuned Harley Davidson. A 2011 iteration of the
tune sees Johnny Cash/June Carter-style backing vocals, which sadly donÆt
make it to the album version. When they do appear, however, such as on
ôTasteless But Taciturn,ö the results are glorious and heavenly as the song
itself. The latter steps softly and relies on a lightly-tapping verse which
builds and breathes and ascends like a soul being lifted off the earth.
On ôI Was a Streetlight,ö the verses are both momentous and spaced-out,
surfing beneath sun-stroked guitar lines. A moment of abrupt clarity comes
in the chorus refrains, which affect like a father shaking his burn-out son
awake. Overall the melody is sweet and simple, playing like an even warpier
Velvet Underground tune put through a whisky-and-chewing tobacco wash cycle.
More dizzy psychedelia come in the fittingly-titled ôSpinning as We Turn,ö
which evokes the Velvets again (here a bit via Love and Rockets), with even
more chord visibility, some swelling guitar sonics (a la ôHeroinö),
singalong-friendly chanting, tambourine smacks, and Lou Reed-like emphasis in
the involuntary mandate ôànow YOU drag it through the mud.ö
The album, like anything good and lasting, takes a good many listens to get
at its stubborn heart. The melodies are coated in finely woven layers which
arenÆt as straight-forward as they seem to be. And with dense lines to
dismantle in addition to the materials theyÆre carefully wrapped in, prepare
to invest time in this true love of a band.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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* NuHS we miss you! *
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