Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 11/02/2004
Twee-jawed indie hippies
Grandaddy deliver a pleasantly useless mixtape with
Artist's Choice: Below the Radio. Featuring a predictable grab bag of similarly
lo-fi precious moments
rock, the compilation is primarily lead
Grandad Jason Lytle's doing and it plays like a
K-Tel commercial for Gen X sad sack-ism. Avoiding any messy iconoclasm,
Lytle handpicks various "If you like us, you should really hear this" tracks by
Beulah,
Earlimart, and others. He's even supplied track-by-track soliloquies written in a conversational tone on why he picked each song. On
Beck -- who's
"We Live Again" kicks off the disc -- he writes, "a living legend in my eyes," while
the Handsome Family's
"I Fell" brings on scenes of being "Lost in the out of doors, dementia, and love" and
Blonde Redhead's
"For the Damaged" reads simply, "Chills..." Although titled
Below the Radio, it's hard to argue that artists like
Beck and
Pavement are exactly left, right, below, or otherwise of the mainstream radio dial. That said, your average Urban Outfitters indie kid might not have yet caught
Little Wings' sublimely dippy
"Sand Canyon" or waxed rural over
Virgil Shaw's depresso
alt-country anthem
"Twisted Layer." And
Lytle has at least chosen lesser-heard album tracks, avoiding any overplayed hits. Considering that most
Grandaddy fan faithful probably already own this stuff,
Below the Radio largely plays as a big love letter from
Lytle to the bands he admires. In the end, that's pretty cool.
~Matt Collar, All Music Guide
;)
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