Consider the defining conflict of our generation: flesh vs. hardware. It's been the central thematic tension of the 21st century thus far, and countless indie bands have exploited (some mercilessly) the discord generated by mixing organic and machine-made elements within their songs, building friction and malcontent through the juxtaposition. For a lot of bands, this means combining acoustic guitars, synthesizers and Brian Deck; for Grandaddy, man vs. machine is separate aesthetic principle entirely-- one that has far less to do with music than with the imminent fate of our universe.
On 2000's The Sophtware Slump, Grandaddy were radically pessimistic, a band droopingly resigned to humanity's relative uselessness in the face of gnashing, impeding technology; it was a stance that kicked open the gates for lots of OK Computer-aligning and gobs of millennial anxiety/robot nightmares. The idea of calculated perfection overtaking goofy human error is some awfully scary shit-- mostly because our potential futility is such a perfectly plausible concern. Consequently, The Sophtware Slump was a chillingly foreboding record, both intellectually and aurally frightening: it was peppered with moments of pure sonic brilliance ("He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot") but ultimately burdened by its own dark, apocryphal apprehensions.
Three years later, Sumday glows. While it might feel oddly recognizable to some (please insert requisite Radiohead/Pavement/Sparklehorse reference here), Sumday's dim, protracted familiarity has far more to do with the band's sudden character shift than their occasionally questionable ingenuity. The déjà vu here is internal: Sumday sounds vaguely like Grandaddy.
Pastoral, sanguine, and oddly buoyant, the album is far less sinister (and certainly less adventurous) than Grandaddy's former studio experiments, but still comes complete with its own curious set of demands: the first six songs are strikingly (and, presumably, deliberately) similar in timing, tone and strum. Luckily, the band avoids the sameness that often comes with such a consecutive string of spacious midtempo pop songs; instead, the effect is a dreamily cohesive half-hour of music, the perfect extended metaphor, a big warm blanket to curl up in and chew on.
Thematically, not too much has changed: Grandaddy seem to be actively pigeonholing themselves as a band preoccupied, at least lyrically, with the encroachment of mean, blank-faced technology. Sumday, fortunately, sees the band employing a more laughably absurdist bent (which, I suppose, could have arisen from the tragic-- or hilarious, or irrelevant-- irony that The Flaming Lips have actually already made a very similar record), tackling our collective defeat with a few more giggles and spits. Futuristic apparatus were once apocalyptic-- now they're borderline silly. Computers and sprinkler systems are boldly personified as nervous and insecure rather than silently destructive. Desktops cry out bleeps of lonely despair when no one's around, robots are left in the dark, and, occasionally, vocalist Jason Lytle decides to embody the mechanized other.
In the tellingly titled "I'm on Standby", a bot is banished to a shivery tech services lab, where he glumly laments his malfunctions: "According to the work order you signed/ I'll be down for some time." Meanwhile, humans are reduced to fumbling idiots when denied the shiny trappings of industrialization. "The Group Who Couldn't Say" features a cast of improbable entrepreneurs who, when faced with a day in the countryside, slowly self-destruct ("She kinda lost her shoes/ And lost her mind/ And smashed her phone upon a fallen pine").
Lytle's airy tenor is alarmingly tranquil, and its calmness can be oddly affecting: when he asks, blankly, "Are you happy with what you're doing?" in "The Group Who Couldn't Say" it's almost impossible not to pause and reboot; simplistic sentiments aside, his always-honest, unwavering voice is resonant enough to inspire some serious self-assessment.
When the project finally shifts out of its opening haze (exactly halfway through-- ah, vinyl!), Sumday's soundscape suddenly goes big, fuzzy, and dramatic. Things also get a bit more warm-blooded. "Yeah Is What We Had" is Sumday's triumphant (if unexpected) return to heart-pumping, fleshy reality, a distorted, spectral love song fat with shimmer and regret: when Lytle howls, "In this life/ Will I ever see you again?" it's unbearably clear that the man's not addressing his iBook.
"OK with My Decay" nails the most palpable of human sensations-- fear of mortality-- with frank, wistful piano, thick bass, and swelling synths. Here, Lytle goes sad-eyed: "I'm OK/ With my decay/ I have no choice." Ignore the obtuse lyrics and realize it's hard to get more lifelike (or more heartbreakingly honest) than freaking out about your foreseeable demise.
After enduring years of (yawn) useless Radiohead comparisons, Grandaddy have, ironically, created an album that's fundamentally antithetical to the record their contemporaries are scheduled to release on the same day-- rather than embracing experimentalism and cold calculation as substantive art, Grandaddy have gone soft in a way that's far more satisfying (and, to an extent, more compelling) than their detached past, where the band tended to miss more free throws than Tim Duncan. They've still got their clever title-spellings, and more than one set of lyrics featuring an operating system, but Sumday is all glorious, throbbing heart.
