Grandaddy:
The Sophtware Slump (V2)

The New York Times tagged these guys "the American Radiohead," presumably because this album, like OK Computer, putatively explores our relationship with modern technology. But while Thom Yorke cribbed from the Genesis/King Crimson playbook and ended up with a humorless, synthetic piece of art-rock bloat, head Grandaddy Jason Lytle channels Neil Young/Pavement and arrives at a stranger, more pastoral, and altogether more appealing place. And strange, pastoral and appealing it is; "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot" could be a metaphor for anyone who's had a computer crap out hours before deadline, "Jed the Humanoid" is Frankenstein filtered through After the Gold Rush, and "Broken Household Appliance National Forest" might make you think twice about throwing out that defective hair dryer, even if Lytle seems a reluctant poster boy for the rock and roll environmentalist hall of fame. Like the tens of thousands of twentysomething castaways who should stow this album under their pillows, Lytle's response to the encroachment of the 21st century is neither dejection nor defeat. And why should it be? Its fruits have borne him one nifty LP. No wonder Thom Yorke sounds so depressed.

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