“The Crystal Lake” – Grandaddy
(Words/music: Jason Lytle, available on The Sophtware Slump, V2 Records 2000)
At best, I have mixed feelings about The Sophtware Slump. While some praise it as a masterful work of man versus machine (and go as far as talking about it in the same breath as OK Computer), I find that it’s a very uneven album. The long songs tend to be too long and either overstay their welcome or spend too much time getting started, and a handful of the short songs sound like incomplete ideas. If I didn’t like a handful of the songs on Sumday, I’m not sure I would have made it past “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot.” In my experience, Grandaddy is a band that I enjoy much more in the MP3 era; if I had to listen to one of their albums on vinyl, I’d almost always select something else that I enjoy the entire way through. However, on my computer I can take the handful of songs that I love (and love is the right word – I adore these particular songs) and put them into the pool of songs I shuffle through. Every time one of these songs comes up, I wonder why I don’t listen to the band more often. Then, I put on an album and find myself skipping through to my favorites and remember why I skipped over the others in the first place.
“The Crystal Lake” is one of the Grandaddy songs I enjoy on its own. In particular, the opening guitar riff and appreciating synthesizer mix well to create a distinct atmosphere. The problem with “atmosphere” in music is that it can’t carry a song on its own – once the mood is set, the song needs to do something with it either melodically, structurally, or musically. This is where a lot of Grandaddy songs fall flat for me – they create a mood that lulls me to sleep and before I know it, the song is over. “The Crystal Lake” takes hold right away with that opening riff - the fuzzy tone and tempo keep the song feeling laid back, but the phrase sounds like it came out of the mid 1980s post-punk era. Jason Lytle uses his voice perfectly in this song, letting it gently creep up to the higher points in his register. He sings with such a clear and lifting tone that makes his voice blend in with the rest of the arrangement. In particular, Lytle pushes the boundaries of his voice , making himself sound more human at the end of the chorus just in time to deliver the lines about finding his way after losing it. The rest of Grandaddy’s hallmarks are here – the odd sound effects, the slight textural change entering into the chorus, but it’s Lytle’s voice that puts this song over the edge and moves it from skipped album track to playlist staple.
More on Grandaddy: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
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