After a prolonged absence, the five-piece band from Seattle returns with renewed energies and a darker, sincere new album.
As the story goes, following the success of ‘Four of Arrows’ in 2019, there was an attempt to make a follow-up album in 2021. Then, life happened, and the project was put on hold. The members of the band found themselves drawn in different directions. However, a couple of years passed, and after reconnecting, the decision was made to scrap some of the existing material and begin to write new songs, making good use of the experience accumulated during their time apart. The album’s title references an inside joke in bassist Carrie Goodwin’s family, while also alluding to the long road the band has travelled to arrive at this moment, the release of their third album. The wait might have been long, but it was worth it.
Great Grandpa’s music has acquired the cohesiveness to be found in musicians who have been playing together for over a decade. That’s not to say this was lacking before, as their previous albums, ‘Plastic Cough’ (2017) and ‘Four of Arrows’ (2019), were as tight-sounding as can be. However, ‘Patience, Moonbeam’ has a different quality, more mature perhaps, and much greater than the sum of its parts. The songs have benefited from a more dilated demoing process, in which different iterations of each track were considered. The result is more ambitious and (God forgive me for using this word) sophisticated than before. It feels like a new period for the band, one in which their personal and musical past is acknowledged, as they veer into uncharted territories.
“Saw you at the party
We called you by your new name
You had changed
But the heart of you was still the same”
These words, taken from the track ‘Task’, perfectly encapsulate the feeling of listening to the new material. There are new elements to the band’s sound, but the old musical core is still present. Musical references stretch further back in time, slipping away from the sound of their contemporaries and embracing the tradition established by 20th-century classics, albeit updated for our times. These more traditional acoustic elements contrast with the simultaneous use of looped percussion, electronic overdubs, or formant shifting in certain tracks. The nuances of the picked and strummed guitars and the bowed strings transport you to the physical space where they were recorded, while the digital techniques provide an almost ethereal feeling. Throughout the album, the mood fluctuates constantly yet naturally, like the flow and ebb of a tide. In this sense, the band refuses to be constrained by easy labels and expands its sound in imaginative new directions, staying true to their old penchant for non-traditional song structures.
The album closes with ‘Kid’, inspired by a difficult personal experience. What lies behind the sometimes-cryptic lyrics can be intuited purely through the music, imbued with great emotional intensity. Personal experiences are distilled into something real and profound. And in the times of artificial intelligence, this reminds you of how music is nurtured by experience, by being immersed in the world and all its chaotic glory. The track’s final minutes are a brilliant denouement to an overall impressive album.
