Grandaddy
Just Like the Fambly Cat
V2 Records

I draw a distinct line between music critics and music fans. While a music fan might admit the limitations of their musical knowledge or reveal their guilty listening pleasures, a music critic is always self serving and puts himself and his words above the music. The music critic is a dastardly breed whose favorite activities include gleefully punching his stamp of disapproval on any record deemed “non-genius” and thinking of new, inventive ways to compare the three minute pop song with ancient Russian folklore. Music is simply a vessel through which he aims to receive attention. Unfortunately for indie veterans Grandaddy, the music critic has nothing to gain by complimenting their latest and final release, Just like the Fambly Cat.

If you were recently awakened from a coma and asked to determine the current year by reading several big-shot reviews of Grandaddy’s latest album, you might come up with the guess 2000. How is that? According to these music critics, Grandaddy will forever be identified as the strange, experimental outfit that released the Sophtware Slump in 2000 to mass critical acclaim. It’s oddness and man vs. technology themes were rich with metaphorical potential and a perfect spring board for any 3 page music essay. It laughed in the face of pop convention and dared to go where no other drunken, suicidal android ever even dreamed of going. The broken household appliance national forest was filled with music critics desperately searching for the perfect combination of sentences that would grant them endless attention and esteem from readers. But what about the album that came afterwards? What was that one called again?

Oh yes. Sumday. That’s the one. Why would the music critic care about a little pop record that uses conventional song structures and whose lyrics are decipherable and focused? Even if it was the best pop album of 2003, it had nothing to offer, right? Wrong, my friends. This is where music fan steps in. Unclouded by a sense of loyalty to self, most music fans were able to appreciate Sumday for what it was- an original and beautiful pop record- and accept that Grandaddy were no longer trying their damndest to be different. Even in 2006 (that’s a grand total of 6 years since the Sophtware Slump was released), music critics still haven’t grasped this fact.

Every negative review of Just like the Fambly Cat is stuck on the idea that Grandaddy have failed to push the boundaries of their music; that the band has lost it’s experimental charm. Hello! Just Like the Fambly Cat is a pop record, not an avant garde piece of artwork. If you slight the band for being safe or traditional than you are obviously missing the big picture. From the perspective of this music fan, Grandaddy have compiled an album of songs that continue in the direction established on Sumday while at the same time drawing from their louder and discordant past.

Jeez Louise and 50% are enjoyable reminders that Grandaddy still know how to rock, while Where I’m Anywhere is easily the most laid back and, in turn, confident song the band has written (I dare you not to sing along with ‘Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow’). Elevate Myself is another strong point for the record. “I don’t want to work all night and day on songs that make the young girls cry,” songwriter Jason Lytle sings on the track, “I just want to elevate myself.”  On Just like the Fambly Cat, what is to be the band’s final release, he has fulfilled his goal.

Although it doesn’t quite match the focus or cohesiveness of Sumday, Just like the Fambly Cat will still please fans of the modern pop incarnation of Grandaddy. It is a fitting end to what has been one of my personal favorite indie bands of the past five years.  If music critics could see past their own egos for a moment they would realize Lytle and company have actually included a lot of the nuance and spaciousness that they have been clamoring for since y2k. Oh well, it’s their loss.

MP3
Elevate Myself

Website
Grandaddy website