Grandaddy - Under the Western Freeway / The Broken Down Comforter Collection

Okay, so first up we have Grandaddy. As mentioned in the introduction, my friend David copied a fairly sizeable number of albums for me in, I think, the summer of 2001, and this was one of them. I'm not actually 100% sure where I heard the band for the first time though. I know 'A.M. 180' was Mark & Lard's record of the week when it's was released as a single towards the end of 1998, so it may well have been then. That same track was also included on an NME cover mount CD called Independent and All Still Taking Liberties - Volume 1 a few weeks later. I have that CD, but I think I bought it from the second hand record shop Hag's in Lampeter, West Wales, a little while later (by which point I already knew of Grandaddy) rather than with the paper when it was released (Hag's had a bin of old cover mount CDs and cassettes that they sold for 50p or a pound, so it was a good way of picking up tracks you liked on the cheap), so it must have been Mark & Lard now that I think about it. Funily enough, I think it was definitely a cover mount CD where David first heard Grandaddy though. I'd lent him one of Uncut magazine's Unconditionally Guaranteed releases which happened to feature 'For the Dishwasher', and he was quite taken with it (as I recall he even included it on a compilation tape he made, that he named The Fixed Up Uncomfortable Collection as an homage).

Artist: Grandaddy
Album: Under the Western Freeway
UK Record Label: Big Cat
UK Release Date: 13th April 1998
UK Single Releases from Album: 'Everything Beautiful Is Far Away', 'Laughing Stock', 'Summer Here Kids' and 'A.M. 180'

Under the Western Freeway is the band's first proper studio album (there'd been some self-released cassettes earlier), and whilst their second album The Sophtware Slump is often the album of theirs that gets the most plaudits, I think this one is my favourite. There's something about the fragility of singer Jason Lytle's voice that imbues a certain soul into the tracks, that lifts them above some of their lo-fi contemporaries of the late nineties American indie scene. I think my favourite tracks are the ones that were released as singles, 'A.M. 180', 'Summer Here Kids', 'Laughing Stock' and in particular 'Everything Beautiful Is Far Away' (which listening back to now I realise has a real poetic quality to it). There's something quite haunting about 'Go Progress Chrome' that I'd never noticed before, that's on the list of favourites too now. Final track 'Lawn and So On' ends, is followed by a period of silence, and then an untitled hidden track of crickets singing, a suitably soothing ending!

You can listen to the album here

Artist: Grandaddy
Album: The Broken Down Comforter Collection
UK Record Label: Big Cat
UK Release Date: June 1999
UK Single Releases from Album: None

On Side B we have The Broken Down Comforter Collection, this was a UK only release that compiled the A Pretty Mess By This One Band (which itself included some tracks from one of the afore mentioned self-released cassettes, in this case Complex Party Come Along Theories) and Machines Are Not She EPs. I don't think I've actually listened to this a great deal before, but I'm really rather enjoying it, the opening section of 'Levitz' in particular has stood out so far. 'Away Birdies with Special Sounds' sounds like an interview with someone recounting a bizarre tale to the police or something. 'Kim You Bore Me to Death' appears to be a Pixies pastiche (the Kim of the title presumably being Kim Deal), with Lytle doing his best Black Francis impression, and he's actually not bad at it! The nature of this collection - EP and early cassette tracks - means it's more lo-fi and rough and ready than the studio album that proceeded it, but I quite like that quality, you get a sense of the band's sound progressing and evolving. One of the perils of putting more than one album on a single tape was that sometimes they just wouldn't quite fit fully, and that was the case here, as whilst the 'final' track 'Egg Hit and Jack Too' is included there wasn't room for the hidden track 'You Drove Your Car Into a Moving Train'. Never fear though, we do get that track on a later cassette (utilising left over tape space was also a bit of an art form, you'd ideally want as little as possible).

I did later buy both of these albums on CD (along with the The Sophtware Slump), but I think I sold them when I needed money. I subsequently reacquired the second album, but not these two, something I need to rectify I think (I know they're both on Spotify, but I like to have the albums I like in my collection).

You can listen to the album here

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