The Sophtware Slump : Grandaddy : Review : Rolling Stone

The second album from this Modesto, California, band is a loose indie-rock suite about how sad and funny and fleeting technology actually is. The suggestion from frontman Jason Lytle (also Grandaddy's principal instrumentalist) is that all technology eventually becomes as poignantly dated as old toaster ovens and vacuum cleaners. The title of the noisy, well-sculpted tune "Broken Household Appliance National Forest" speaks for itself; on "Jed the Humanoid," the smooth-singing Lytle traces the slow, awful death of a homemade robot friend in a funereal ballad. Just as Grandaddy won't accept conventional wisdom about electronic panaceas, their music answers only to itself -- they ecstasize like Neil Young, and soar and twinkle like Electric Light Orchestra. More important, though, Lytle's rigorous, knotty songwriting skills check his band's yen for indie-rock messiness. And when everything coheres at the end, with the outstanding soul and reverie of "Miner at the Dial-a-View" and "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky," Grandaddy can be exhilarating. (RS 842)

JAMES HUNTER