With the right timing, an artist sometimes manages to make a recording that specifically evokes a place and time. Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump is impossible to listen to for me without thinking of 2000, the tech bubble bursting, Bush vs. Gore, drug fueled halloween parties you had to crawl through a window off a fire escape and pass through a giant plastic tunnel to get to.
Grandaddy attracted a devoted following at the time, as indie fans gravitated toward the band, entranced by the lazy charm of singer/guitarist/fearless leader Jason Lytle, the array of techno bleeps and bloops, and the endearing tales of dumb pilots and alcoholic androids.
The ‘Sophtware Slump’ is a heady, beautiful and ambitious work that holds up with contemporaries such as Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs, Wilco’s Summerteeth and The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin.
- Will Teague
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