Grails – Deep Politics

You know…I have to give it to Grails not only for staying strong through all these years but rarely receiving the publicity equal to the amount of work put in each album. It is not like this band is Oregon best kept secret and they are bidding their time before breaking big. Since 2004, Grails has been in the trenches with little to show for their efforts. Sure their releases like Burning Impurities have garnered favorable reviews but few times if any has this led to any sustainable attention. Whether cruel twists of fate or because their albums are full of abstract instrumentals with little thesis, Grails has been left on the shores while the more successful post rockers party on an old fashioned casino steam boat. I would love to see this band break big with a generational defining record like Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To the Heavens or Young Team. I’m not saying Deep Politics could be that record but there should be sometime time for it.

Deep Politics does not change from previous records as the highlights are buried deep under discarded refuse. Beginning with “Corridors of Power,” Grails drops the stoner psychelelia for a haunting downtempo track taking its inspiration from old exotica records. Corridors bleeds into the title track which begins with a soft piano before unraveling into a saddening instrumental ballad which could’ve been the score to the greatest golden age crime drama never made. The dark easy listening atmosphere continues with “Daughters Of Bilitis” offering dark hard boiled noir piece which lingers for a few minutes before fading into an alley. While there are many instances of greatness, the entire record is fractured leaving listeners to wander and sift through the sands for buried treasure. There maybe a golden ring or a comically torn boot with the soul halfway torn off waiting for you at the bottom. The record ends with a trilogy of long, drugged out psych instrumentals leading me to realize why other Grail’s records never lasted throughout the ensuing years. If Deep Politics, and to some extent Grails, were a piece of art, it would be met with mixed reviews with one side dismissing it as uninspired while the other claims intellectual inferiority of the former.

Grails makes records the way they want to and if you want to hang with them for a night, its up to you to have a good time. There will be no hand holding through Deep Politics. There will be no free dinners or cinematic build ups with twinkling chords and interwoven melancholy and wonder. It’s up to you to get there and find your way back. Deep Politics does not have the emotional character nor historic qualities to make it a defining record for the next generation. This does not mean it is bad nor uninteresting. It is just another Grails record which will sit with the other ones.

Grails - Deep Politics, reviewed by Kaptain Carbon on 2011-03-22T10:44:40-07:00 rating 3.4 out of 5