Grant Lee Buffalo
By Gwen Ihnat
Grant Lee Buffalo has always been an exceptional band, as its first three albums Fuzzy (1993), Mighty Joe Moon (1994), and Copperopolis (1996) clearly attest. The trio specialized in dreamy, hazy, thoughtful songs that told the stories of forgotten towns ("Bethlehem Steel," the Pennsylvania town and Jesus' birthplace), woodsy characters ("Mighty Joe Moon"), and plaintive love whining ("Honey Don't Think"). Perfectly fine to listen to around the house. They even mustered up enough sleepy energy for a fine live set.
GLB's new album, the aptly named Jubilee (Slash/Warner Bros.), dispels the band's sleepy notions with its first buzz-saw guitar chord. The pensiveness and intricacies are still there, but now they're laced with a strength that's irrepressible. The Neil Young-derived "My,My,My" alone could snap your vertebrae. "Testimony"'s catchy riff is downright spiritual, and "Fine How'd Ya Do" has an old-fashioned nickelodeon-type backbeat that gets downright ghostly as the song progresses. The fascinating sound of Jubilee is even more notable in the face (or perhaps because of) producer/bassist Paul Kimble's departure. So it was up to singer/songwriter/guitarist Grant Lee Phillips and percussionist Joey Peters to pull themselves together as a duo and regroup.
"Joey and I worked pretty intensely on this record," Phillips describes, cutting into some Eggs Benedict at an Old Town breakfast eatery. "It streamlined the whole process, I'd bring the song in some kind of rough form to Joey and we domoed a number of the songs in 8-track, 16-track, 24-track. It allowed us to kind of work through those songs and it gave us a model when it came time to bring some other musicians in."
Musicians like R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, reportedly a huge fan of the band, Robyn Hitchcock, E from the Eels, and Wallflower's organist Rami Jaffee. "The album, it's architecture, it's foundation, had been laid down before people like Michael Stipe and Robyn Hitchcock came in. It was pretty far along."
"The initial recordings of most of these songs," adds Peters, "came from [former Tonic bassist] Dan [Rothschild] playing bass and Grant and myself pretty much all live in the studio over two weeks. That was part of the idea of doing this record when we met with [producer] Paul Fox; not entirely like 'Let's make a live, in-the-studio record,' but that was pretty much a good starting point."
All this talent adds up to GLB's most well-received album to date. "We keep getting a good reaction," notes Phillips, "perhaps because this record is a more immediate, a more extroverted album. We're having the time of our lives out there doing these shows, and as always, it's a privilege to record an album of your own songs."
At first listen, Jubilee sounds so detailed that you wonder how in the hell the band is going to be able to translate it to stage. "I think it probably sounds a bit more complex than it really is," says Peters. "Being on the road now and playing these songs, we're pretty much able to play them the way they sound on the record. There may be a percussion part on the record I'm not able to play live, but by and large, the majority of the tones and feeling of this record are much easier to convey live and on stage to the audience than I think any of the other [albums] were."
This sounds dubious until the actual live show at Schubas the next day. The band - Phillips and Peters with bassist Rothschild and a multi-instrumentalist named Jon Brion who does double time on the key-boards (among other things)- strut out onto the stage in bad, ill-fitting tuxes, like the replacement band for a Holiday Inn lounge. Phillips, who had been chain-sucking Ricolas at breakfast the day before, has rested his voice enough to be able to wail in full force.
The crowd is rocked completely, so much so that the band is compelled to come back out for three encores. They stick pretty close to the new stuff; when fans clamor for old songs off of Fuzzy, Phillips replies, "I am unfamiliar with these Doobie Brother compositions you speak of." He does do a medley of covers in the middle of one song, including Bowie's "Diamond Dogs."
"I grew up with a lot of great records that had it all, really," he remembers. "records like Diamond Dogs by David Bowie; that's a really freaky record. There are albums that never get played on the radio that are brilliant."
"With the record company," says Peters, "they trust that we're - hopefully - gonna make good records, as we've made some in the past. So I feel when we go into the studio that they are sort of excited to hear what we're gonna do. It kind of gives us the room to do what we want to do. The things that we wanted to accomplish on the record were already established in our mind as the kind of record we want to make. The radio thing is so out of our hands and out of your control. It's a whole other world, y'know?"
WIth radio play out of their control, the band is clearly devoted to their live set. "We think about making every night new. Every show has to be one of a kind," Phillips states. "Without getting too zen about it or anything, it's just about being in the moment." However, an odd physical fact assures spontaneity for the band. "I've got such bad eyesight," Phillips reveals, "and I tend to wear contacts on stage and they bug me. My glasses slide down my nose when I get sweaty. So all of this means that I could never read a set list, y'know, and that may be the key to spontaneity for me."
One thing that's for certain in their live set is that the aforementioned "My, My, My" has to be played late in the show. "It really turns haywire, that song," says Phillips. "We have to play it near the end of the set because by the time we get through the song, all the guitars are out of tune, the drum heads are busted, my throat's wrecked, and it's time to go home at that point."
At Schubas, after "My, My, My" delivers on its destructive promise, GLB plays a few more songs and then the crowd reluctantly trickles out. A roadie delivers the set list from the drum kit, and sure enough, the band didn't follow it much at all. No one seemed to mind. Grant Lee Buffalo has somehow managed to translate their impressive new album into an exponentially greater force live, which is no small feat. Getting radio play should be a snap.
By Gwen Ihnat
Grant Lee Buffalo has always been an exceptional band, as its first three albums Fuzzy (1993), Mighty Joe Moon (1994), and Copperopolis (1996) clearly attest. The trio specialized in dreamy, hazy, thoughtful songs that told the stories of forgotten towns ("Bethlehem Steel," the Pennsylvania town and Jesus' birthplace), woodsy characters ("Mighty Joe Moon"), and plaintive love whining ("Honey Don't Think"). Perfectly fine to listen to around the house. They even mustered up enough sleepy energy for a fine live set.
GLB's new album, the aptly named Jubilee (Slash/Warner Bros.), dispels the band's sleepy notions with its first buzz-saw guitar chord. The pensiveness and intricacies are still there, but now they're laced with a strength that's irrepressible. The Neil Young-derived "My,My,My" alone could snap your vertebrae. "Testimony"'s catchy riff is downright spiritual, and "Fine How'd Ya Do" has an old-fashioned nickelodeon-type backbeat that gets downright ghostly as the song progresses. The fascinating sound of Jubilee is even more notable in the face (or perhaps because of) producer/bassist Paul Kimble's departure. So it was up to singer/songwriter/guitarist Grant Lee Phillips and percussionist Joey Peters to pull themselves together as a duo and regroup.
"Joey and I worked pretty intensely on this record," Phillips describes, cutting into some Eggs Benedict at an Old Town breakfast eatery. "It streamlined the whole process, I'd bring the song in some kind of rough form to Joey and we domoed a number of the songs in 8-track, 16-track, 24-track. It allowed us to kind of work through those songs and it gave us a model when it came time to bring some other musicians in."
Musicians like R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, reportedly a huge fan of the band, Robyn Hitchcock, E from the Eels, and Wallflower's organist Rami Jaffee. "The album, it's architecture, it's foundation, had been laid down before people like Michael Stipe and Robyn Hitchcock came in. It was pretty far along."
"The initial recordings of most of these songs," adds Peters, "came from [former Tonic bassist] Dan [Rothschild] playing bass and Grant and myself pretty much all live in the studio over two weeks. That was part of the idea of doing this record when we met with [producer] Paul Fox; not entirely like 'Let's make a live, in-the-studio record,' but that was pretty much a good starting point."
All this talent adds up to GLB's most well-received album to date. "We keep getting a good reaction," notes Phillips, "perhaps because this record is a more immediate, a more extroverted album. We're having the time of our lives out there doing these shows, and as always, it's a privilege to record an album of your own songs."
At first listen, Jubilee sounds so detailed that you wonder how in the hell the band is going to be able to translate it to stage. "I think it probably sounds a bit more complex than it really is," says Peters. "Being on the road now and playing these songs, we're pretty much able to play them the way they sound on the record. There may be a percussion part on the record I'm not able to play live, but by and large, the majority of the tones and feeling of this record are much easier to convey live and on stage to the audience than I think any of the other [albums] were."
This sounds dubious until the actual live show at Schubas the next day. The band - Phillips and Peters with bassist Rothschild and a multi-instrumentalist named Jon Brion who does double time on the key-boards (among other things)- strut out onto the stage in bad, ill-fitting tuxes, like the replacement band for a Holiday Inn lounge. Phillips, who had been chain-sucking Ricolas at breakfast the day before, has rested his voice enough to be able to wail in full force.
The crowd is rocked completely, so much so that the band is compelled to come back out for three encores. They stick pretty close to the new stuff; when fans clamor for old songs off of Fuzzy, Phillips replies, "I am unfamiliar with these Doobie Brother compositions you speak of." He does do a medley of covers in the middle of one song, including Bowie's "Diamond Dogs."
"I grew up with a lot of great records that had it all, really," he remembers. "records like Diamond Dogs by David Bowie; that's a really freaky record. There are albums that never get played on the radio that are brilliant."
"With the record company," says Peters, "they trust that we're - hopefully - gonna make good records, as we've made some in the past. So I feel when we go into the studio that they are sort of excited to hear what we're gonna do. It kind of gives us the room to do what we want to do. The things that we wanted to accomplish on the record were already established in our mind as the kind of record we want to make. The radio thing is so out of our hands and out of your control. It's a whole other world, y'know?"
WIth radio play out of their control, the band is clearly devoted to their live set. "We think about making every night new. Every show has to be one of a kind," Phillips states. "Without getting too zen about it or anything, it's just about being in the moment." However, an odd physical fact assures spontaneity for the band. "I've got such bad eyesight," Phillips reveals, "and I tend to wear contacts on stage and they bug me. My glasses slide down my nose when I get sweaty. So all of this means that I could never read a set list, y'know, and that may be the key to spontaneity for me."
One thing that's for certain in their live set is that the aforementioned "My, My, My" has to be played late in the show. "It really turns haywire, that song," says Phillips. "We have to play it near the end of the set because by the time we get through the song, all the guitars are out of tune, the drum heads are busted, my throat's wrecked, and it's time to go home at that point."
At Schubas, after "My, My, My" delivers on its destructive promise, GLB plays a few more songs and then the crowd reluctantly trickles out. A roadie delivers the set list from the drum kit, and sure enough, the band didn't follow it much at all. No one seemed to mind. Grant Lee Buffalo has somehow managed to translate their impressive new album into an exponentially greater force live, which is no small feat. Getting radio play should be a snap.
