On the second track ‘Never Rest’ on their third album Patience, Moonbeam, Great Grandpa recall a time when someone said ‘Edelweiss’ because ‘it sounds nice’. The Edelweiss flower is found in remote mountain areas in northern Europe. It is a beautiful detail in a rugged landscape. In a way that seems unique to bands from the US, Great Grandpa manage to simultaneously express awestruck wonder at both the vastness of the outside world and achingly specific, human details. The album cover is a painting of the moon held up reverentially – an offering to others rather than a trophy. Once you’ve listened to Patience, Moonbeam, you’ll consider it a mandatory act of kindness to share it with everyone.
‘Never Rest’ is preceded by the contradictory ‘Sleep’. Imagine that the quartet from ‘Nightswimming’ have been commissioned to create a piece that conveys the sound of danger – a wolf prowling the edges of the manicured lawn, something to be feared yet admired. The cello and acoustic guitar on the first 50 seconds of ‘Never Rest’ bring to mind Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’. ‘I want that something,’ Al Menne softly sings before guitars come crashing in and he declares, ‘I’ll haul it / Dragging cross the range / To hold that feeling / That state of certainty / Unfeigned’ – as if, in the words of Kate Bush, just saying it could make it happen.
‘Junior’, with its slide guitar and references to ‘that damn dog’ and committing ‘light crimes with my buddies all night’, gives the initial impression of being a mischievous yet pleasant folk singalong. The track blossoms into a heavenly outro – against a backdrop of pining violin and cascading guitar, Menne repeats, ‘You went working on your daddy’s mile / I saw you twirling / It drove me wild.’ As with an Adrianne Lenker song, there’s a high chance of tears, but happy ones.
‘Emma’ has the foreboding tone of ‘Something In The Way’, and lyrics such as ‘head is in the soft tube’ do little to dispel the sense of unease. ‘Ladybug’ is a big daft group hug of a song. The start is a whirlpool swell of heavily-treated beats and vocal snippets, meaning that it’s not that far off Madonna’s ‘Music’. You’ll sway to lyrics as indisputably gorgeous as ‘Semitones are the distance between lines / All I think about is you sometimes,’ and you’ll momentarily try to decipher lyrics such as ‘Father of the ladybug / Dressed like Donald Glover on a GQ cover,’ before realising that the point is to enjoy them.
‘Kiss The Dice’ is a nostalgic interlude (‘I used to kiss the dice and roll’) before the skittering ‘Doom’, which, after the Fever Ray-like beginning, sounds like In Rainbows-era Radiohead. It then performs a thundering Godspeed gear change and reprises a melody and sentence structure from ‘Emma’ (‘It’s closer when I see you, damn.’ / ‘It’s funny how I need you, damn.’) The brisk strumming and ‘ooh ooh ooh’ hook on ‘Task’ might make you think of Taylor Swift, and lyrics as gloriously optimistic as these might confirm the comparison: ‘It’s like there’s only sun / All the darkness here is gone.’
‘Top Gun’ is a gentle stomp in the manner of Sheryl Crow’s ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ that paraphrases Chris Cornell (‘A black hole sun / Trying to wash away the rain’), and the album’s title track is simply a 23-second compilation of unintelligible ‘lost & calling out in the woods’ voices. ‘Ephemera’ has the lounge funk feel of Sia-led Zero 7. The album ends with the epic, episodic lead single ‘Kid’, which Pat and Carrie Goodwin wrote after the loss of their first pregnancy.
After listening to Patience, Moonbeam a hundred times you’ll still discover new parts to love. Maybe a thousand times. Unless you do decide to share it with others, it could remain your beautiful secret, like an Edelweiss flower at the top of a mountain that no one has seen.
Patience, Moonbeam is out now via Run For Cover Records
Great Grandpa: Instagram | Bandcamp
Review by Neil Laurenson
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