Hear Grandaddy’s Sprawling New Song ‘Bison on the Plains’

Grandaddy have unveiled their sprawling new song “Bison on the Plains,” the band’s first new music since releasing their reunion album Last Place in March 2017.

The synth-heavy song was inspired by the Cars’ 1984 single “Drive,” frontman Jason Lytle said in a statement. “Setting out with the intent of replicating the ‘feel and vibe’ of  the song ‘Drive’ which is one of my favorite Cars songs …I got a little of the way into “Bison on the Plains” (BOTP) and realized I had failed,” Lytle said.

Unable to finish the song in the “pretentious” studio he set up in Portland, Oregon, Lytle moved into a small house where, following “a recent divorce and a purging of all domestic belongings/furniture,” he wrote and recorded much of Last Place.

“Anyways…I thought BOTP might make the cut for Last Place but it did not. Apparently it still had some baggage carried over from whence it came,” Lytle wrote. “I loved the words though…and didn’t want to give up on it….so it simply got shelved in  some incomplete form until I could come back and spend some more thoughtful time with it. So here it is.”

“Bison on the Plains” is the first installment of a series of singles from Danger Mouse’s 30th Century Records, which released Last Place; new tracks from some of the label’s other artists are on the horizon in the coming months.

“Like all of the noises, sound samples, buttons, keys, circuits, wires, strings, and gear it takes for someone like me to facilitate the lonely looking image of a solitary bison standing out on the open plains,” Lytle added.