Grand Canyon “Forevermore” – as the raven didn’t quoth

Photo: Tristan Sherfield

Looks like we’ve slid into a bit of a power-pop path to end the week on – well if that’s what happened then that’s what it is.  You’ll be familiar, assiduous Americana UK reader, with Grand Canyon who hail out of LA and embody a classic sound from the tail-end of the “long sixties” – so somewhere around 1968 to about, oh, 1974-ish.  There’s a joyful embracing of freedom on ‘Forevermore‘ that might bring any number of people to mind –  a bit of Petty, a bit of Zevon.  These are not comparisons that Grand canyon baulk at – “hey,” they might say, “that’s great music – and if we sound like that then, hey, this might just be great music too.”  And they’d have a point.

The song is the title track of the band’s new album – and it’s a Covid album to the extent that songwriters Joe Guese and Casey Shea turned Shea’s garage into a makeshift studio and taught themselves to record, engineer, produce, and mix the recently released ‘Forevermore.’  It’s also a  Bible inspired album, although not necessarily a religious album as such – Shea’s other Covid challenge was to read the bible from cover to cover.  Even the Appendixes on genealogy and different languages (err…are we thinking of ‘The Lord of the Rings’?).  Whatever – Shea found stories and characters that resonated and drew on these for an album that Grand Canyon feels has a greater consistency because of this.  As Shea explained: “As kids, albums meant something to us – they still mean something to me; I’d rather listen to an album than a playlist. So I mean, it may be against better judgment, but it was important to us to release these songs together.”

About Jonathan Aird 2891 Articles
Sure, I could climb high in a tree, or go to Skye on my holiday. I could be happy. All I really want is the excitement of first hearing The Byrds, the amazement of decades of Dylan's music, or the thrill of seeing a band like The Long Ryders live. That's not much to ask, is it?
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