Given my love for Grandaddy and my total ignorance of Earlimart it has proved annoyingly easy for me to treat this as the next Grandaddy album, rather than the collaboration between the two bands that it actually is.

At times the collaboration fails to spark just a little.  I am, as I said, no Earlimart expert, but there are a couple of tracks on here which smack just a little of the later, more lacklustre Grandaddy songs.

Having said that, some of it is fucking great.  Most of it in fact.  I’ve rarely ever taken to a Grandaddy album immediately, and this was the same in that it’s only now I’ve heard it a dozen times through that I find myself having a little tiny celebration in my head when certain tracks come on.  The title track, Red Curbs, All Fucked on Beer and a couple of others trigger that response, not least the song which is probably making fun of this very review in advance: GNDN.  Retaliate first, as my old dad used to say.

More than the songs themselves, however, what strikes me most about this is the way that the collaboration seems to have invigorated Jason Lytle, whose later Grandaddy work was starting to flag a little and whose solo album a couple of years ago, whilst gorgeous in large parts, seemed to lack a little sense of purpose.  This doesn’t have that at all, it’s just as loose an album as they promised when they formed the group: relaxed, energetic and with a genuine sense of liveliness.

So it may not be my favourite thing the Grandaddy lads have ever been involved in, and apologies once again for my ignorance of Earlimart (eMusic here I come!), but this is nevertheless a really good album which highlights the really refreshing effect a well-judged collaboration can have on people’s creative spark.

Admiral Radley – The Thread

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Admiral Radley – I’m All Fucked on Beer

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