[rating=9.00]
Last Place shows no signs of the rust you would expect from a decade-long recording hiatus. Reunion albums have a notorious track record, but Grandaddy is able to recapture the spirit of their original albums without ever sounding like an old band imitating its former self.
The California quintet disbanded shortly after the release of 2006’s Just Like the Fambly Cat and remained off the music radar until reuniting in 2012. Five years later, Grandaddy’s new album sounds a bit more mature but otherwise the band seems to have picked up where they left off a decade ago.
Lead single and album opener “Way We Won’t” represents the album, as well as the band, well with its fusion of brooding palm-muted guitars and Jason Lytle’s spacey synthesizer riffing. The song seems to reference the inevitability of Grandaddy’s eventual reunion. “Damned if we do, dumb if we don’t, end up again back home,” Lytle sings. The song thrives on the dichotomy of the simplistic lo-fi rhythm, Lytle’s half-whispered vocals, and the psychedelic synths, melding disparate influences in a way that barely fits together and sounds all the better because of that tension.
Much of Last Place follows that pattern, juxtaposing moody analog music with lighthearted electronic elements. The synthesizers in “Brush with the Wild” swirl around and entangle the chugging mid-tempo rhythm as Lytle sings of the regrets of a failed relationship. “Forget the words, the pictures are nice. A dream of a girl who’s somebody else’s life,” he sings. Later in the song, Lytle seems to admit blame for the relationship’s dysfunction. “We had a thing, whatever it’s called. And you were a dream, and I was a concrete wall.”
With its multiple tempo shifts and use of repetition, “Check Injin” is the album’s best straight-up rock track, carrying a punk intensity through dynamic peaks and valleys. For the most part, however, Last Place is at its best in its quieter and subtler moments. “This Is the Part” is one of the album’s most melancholic tracks, with Lytle singing of a broken heart over a swirling string section and a slow, despondent beat. “This is the part that shouldn’t have been hard,” Lytle sings to open the song. “Now let me warm my heart; this won’t go smooth.”
“Lost Machine” explores a lack of intimacy in a post-Apocalyptic modern world, juxtaposing images of modern technology engulfed by the natural world, such as a “surveillance audio recorder in a dried-up creek” and the image of hiding out in an old abandoned airport. Most of the song has Lytle singing with breathy vocals over a slow, somber piano line, with occasional electronic flourishes. After the fourth verse, the electronic ambient noise starts to take over, engulfing the piano as Aaron Butch’s drums break into the mix. As the song takes on a more ominous tone, Lytle sings that “everything about us is a lost machine; everything about we is a forgotten dream.”
Like most of Grandaddy’s catalog, Last Place is a slow burning album. It has few standout histrionics, relying more on subtle melodies, musical layers, and storytelling to carry it. Though not Grandaddy’s best album, it avoids the pitfalls normally associated with reunion albums and is a fine addition to the band’s collection.
