Grandaddy. The Sophtware Slump (V2, 2000)

“Last night something pretty bad happened, we lost a friend, all shocked and broken, shut down exploded.”

Formed in 1992, Grandaddy really nailed the Y2K zeitgeist with their particular brand of hippie-robot-rock. In my opinion, they hit their peak on 2000’s Sophtware Slump, a gorgeous landscape of techno-waste featuring android poets, emoting machinery, and a forest full of rusting abandoned appliances. It’s a bleak landscape, to be sure, but in lyricist and lead singer Jason Lytle’s capable hands, it’s a place you won’t mind visiting for the duration of Sophtware Slump.

Beginning with a lush 9-minute (yes, 9-minute) space-trip-opera, you’ll find yourself traveling along with 2000 Man in “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot.” Before you write this off as hippie bullshit (I know, it’s tempting; Lytle is a little too into hackey-sacking-back-packing for my taste, and I’m pretty sure he rides his bike barefoot, but all of that aside) just give it a chance and try not to be swept into 2000 Man’s world.

Once there, you’ll next meet “Hewlett’s Daughter,” leaving a trail of broken hearts in her digital wake as the machine-pocalypse unfolds. With lazy drums, occasionally crashing guitars, and un-parse-able lyrics, it’s probably safe to presume Grandaddy was pretty high while recording this record, and it makes for pretty fun listening.

“Jed The Humanoid” tells the sad tale of a robot created from spare parts, initially loved, ultimately abandoned by his creators, and finally destroyed by alcoholism. Go ahead and laugh, but I promise you will never be more moved by an alcoholic android’s story. Seriously, on the right day, this song can make me cry. But don’t worry, you’re spirits will be lifted with “The Crystal Lake”’s synth-lament for simpler times.

“Chartsengrafs” is one of the harder rocking songs on this record, with driving drums and guitars. It’s followed by “Underneath The Weeping Willow,” a simple piano/vocal combo, which serves as a sweet rest stop before you are dropped into the “Broken Household Appliance National Forest,” the catchiest anthem on global warming you’ll ever sing along to.

Next up is a posthumous poem from our ill-fated humanoid friend Jed about his descent into destruction, appropriate titled “Jed’s Other Poem”: “You said I’d wake up dead drunk/ Alone in the park/ I called you a liar/ But how right you were.” The “E. Knievel Interlude” is a quick synth-bit on the way to meeting the “Miner At The Dial-A-View.” I’ve listened to this song an awful lot, and I’m still not sure exactly what the “Dial-A-View” is, but I am sure our miner has been stuck there for a really long time (forgive the cheesy spoken interlude obviously provided by one of Grandaddy’s girlfriends).

“So You’ll Aim Toward The Sky” rounds out Sophtware Slump on a hopeful note, albeit a note that sounds a bit about colonizing a new planet to replace this dump called Earth that humans have wrecked. Okay, so Grandaddy’s enviro-evangelizing is pretty fierce on this records, but keep in mind this was waaaaaaay back in 2000 before Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore made it cool to give a shit about planet Earth. So put on your time-travel helmet, and just give in to the hippies already. It’s so beautifully crafted, you’ll be hard-pressed to fight it.

Sadly, Grandaddy broke up in 2006, with Jason Lyttle relocating to Montana, ostensibly to live a simpler, greener life, or whatever. Thankfully, he left a trail of great Grandaddy records, including the genius Sophtware Slump, in his wake. -- Anneke Chy

The Sophtware Slump - Grandadd...

Manishevitz. City Life (Jagjaguwar, 2003)

"Back in the day/ We were willing to play/ The songs that/ You'd never forget."

I have a special place in my heart for Manishevitz, mainly because they hail from my home state -- Virginia, that dear Old Dominion -- and are affiliated with one of my favorite labels, Bloomington by way of Richmond-based Jagjaguwar.

When I was in college, I was always proud of Jagjaguwar: it was a great label representing a region (my native central Virginia) that too often got overshadowed by the NoVA-DC axis, home to relative giants like Dischord and Teenbeat. Jagjaguwar signed bands from Charlottesville and Richmond, bands like Drunk and the Curious Digit that played in the basement at Tokyo Rose, bands someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere could boast of.

Adam Busch was a founding member of the Curious Digit before he broke off to mastermind Manishevitz, taking slow-core Americana outfit Drunk's guitarist Via Nuon with him. In Manishevitz, Busch set off to satisfy his eccentric psych-pop sensibilities, crafting fractured indie oddities underpinned by Nuon's fleet-fingered axemanship. Manishevitz specializes in out-there mini-symphonies, instruments layered one upon the other and injected with a strange and ear-catching euphoria. Not for everyone, no, but impossible to forget.

2003's City Life is Manishevitz's third LP, and as bizarre a statement as Busch has made. A lot of the weirdness comes from Busch's vocal delivery: an arch, fey, hilariously fakey pseudo-British hiccup which bounces from the speakers in bursts of artifice. But behind the voice is an advanced songwriting sensibility which shines through time and again on City Life's nine songs and nearly 36 minutes. This is essentially guitar pop, nicely art damaged and skewed, never trading experimentation for a good tune and never wearing out its welcome.

Stylistically, City Life's songs range from the more or less straightforward mid-fi rock of opener "Beretta," its chiming riffs, fuzzy solos, and bouncy hand clap beats setting the stage for a bright and shiny pop holiday, to the semi-drone of "Hate Ilene," which nearly abandons its charming sprawl of a melody shortly after the minute mark, content instead to float into the ether on waves of gentle chords, unspooling single note sustains, and languid drum fills. It's Spiritualized on a budget, and it's far more appetizing than that sounds.

The rollicking barrelhouse piano adds a tuneful touch to the album's title track, as Nuon distinguishes himself with an endless series of abstract-yet-unannoying guitar passages and Busch spins out nonsensical observations on the urban condition -- "You hammer and you nail/ But you've got to be kidding/ Over the oxygen/ You're flipping a dime" -- while investing every line with a crackpot urgency. "Mary Ann" employs horns and woodwinds and punchy drums to craft an asylum inmate's sock hop anthem, and "Colorado Shore" chugs with rock in its heart and God-knows-what on its mind, boasting Warren G-funk keys and one of the catchiest hooks of the collection.

Manishevitz certainly let the freak flag fly, coming at conventions from unusual and untoward angles. But they consistently ground their sound in classical pop territory, and never lose sight of the listenable. And I can say with confidence: Virginia is for lovers of Manishevitz. Or at least it should be.

Manishevitz

Harvey Danger. Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? (Arena Rock, 1997)

"Here's a fact you cannot rise above/ We'll have problems and then we'll have bigger ones."

Harvey Danger were victims of their own success. Having toiled in the Seattle club scene for the better part of the '90s, the guitar pop quartet barged into the mainstream on the strength of their 1997 single "Flagpole Sitta," which was featured in the post-Scream teen horror hit (and Katie Holmes vehicle) Disturbing Behavior and quickly ensconced itself as a staple/bright spot of Clinton era alt-rock radio.

Shortly thereafter, Harvey Danger found themselves selling a crap ton of their debut LP Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? (the title is taken from a line slurred by a blotto Shelley Winters in the 1966 thriller Harper, starring Paul Newman as the titular private eye. You should see it, it's good), becoming hopelessly overexposed, and thereafter sinking into commercial oblivion having achieved the unenviable position of being forgotten by the fickle masses and written off as mainstream one-hitters by the cognoscenti.

Which is way too bad, seeing as 1) "Flagpole Sitta" truly rules, and 2) the rest of Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? is pretty effing great. Harvey Danger deserved the attention, but didn't deserve the backlash, and their debut still stands as a forgotten indie gem, an example of a quirky, smart band obtaining massive mainstream attention.

Let's just start with "Flagpole Sitta." You remember it: a galloping, feverishly hooky mammoth jam, buoyed by a bouncing bassline and irresistibly propulsive drum track, all snappy snares and slamming kickdrum hits. Singer Sean Nelson channels Elvis Costello as he spits out frenzied paranoia like, "Hear the voices in my head/ I swear to God it sounds like they're snoring/ But if you're bored then you're boring/ The agony and the irony, they're killing me," in an adenoidal singsong that's impossible to forget. On top of that, Jeff J. Lin turns in some satisfyingly thorny guitar work, twisting the main riffs to the breaking point and wringing some impressive chaos from his instrument. This is no Eve 6/Marcy Playground/Dishwalla wannabe: it's a song that most bands would kill to write.

And then there's the rest of the album, which adds up to a consistently solid collection of samurai-sharp indie pop. These guys had apparently been listening to the right stuff along the way, from the Attractions to Unrest to the Pixies, steeping their sound in punchy melodies and advanced-class song structures, getting loads of mileage out of the loud-quiet-loud dynamic and wrapping the tunes in just the right amount of smart-assery. The production, by John Goodmanson (who's manned the boards for such indie luminaries as Sleater-Kinney, Pavement, Blonde Redhead, Bikini Kill, and Los Campesinos!) does Harvey Danger all kinds of favors, nailing and amplifying the essential tunefulness of the songs and delivering them like a roundhouse to the jaw.

The first half of the record is gold. Besides the aforementioned "Flagpole Sitta," there's the sugar rush of "Carlotta Valdez," floating on agile strums and catchy bass work until the power chords add menace and weight, and the slow build of "Woolly Muffler," which bides its time until exploding into pure rock fury (well, annoyance, anyway) at the 1:44 mark, guitars blaring and cymbals crashing. "Friends will turn against you/ People disappoint you every time/ So if you've got greatness in you/ Would you do us all a favor and keep it to yourself," sneers Nelson before expounding on a "belabored expat fantasy." The soaring "Private Helicopter" marries ex-girlfriend fantasies to serrated hooks and on-a-dime time changes, while "Problems And Bigger Ones" is the album's most successful down-tempo number, a smoldering, bruising elegy for lost love and missed chances that wouldn't sound out of place on the Promise Ring's emo triumph Nothing Feels Good.

Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? loses a little steam in the back half, but there's nothing embarrassing here. A few too many slow jams, but the rockers are beyond competent, especially the swinging "Old Hat" and "Terminal Annex," with its vaguely Cure-like sparkle and fade, blown-amp solos, and genius put-downs: "You complain about an overflowing cup/ Don't forget that I'm the one who filled that fucker up."

If you'd forgotten about Harvey Danger or written them off, you owe them another listen. You can find Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? for about one cent on Amazon or whatever, and believe me: Harvey Danger's thoughts are worth your penny.