Thighs Wide Shut

Granddady
(Le) Poisson Rouge
February 28th

If you asked me to name one of the more essential albums of the 21st Century, I think I would have to say that one of them would have to be Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump.  It was album with past and future tense – and created an incredible soundscape that I constantly wanted to escape into.  And somehow, 17 years have passed since its release, and I somehow escaped from the reality of that album’s amazingness, and the band that created it

Luckily, a memory refresher was headed my way

My musical tastes haven’t really grown in this century, mainly discovering older groups (it’s all about the classics, man!), but I still and will always maintain a love for certain groups of the new millennium (anything Jack White, Air, Franz Ferdinand, Ladytron, etc).  Grandaddy is one of those groups, but I really did forget about them.  Mainly, they forgot about themselves, as they were broken up for awhile, but alas, here we are, and when I heard that Grandaddy was making a new album and touring it, of course I had to see them… 14 years since I last did - pre-Thighs Wide Shut(!!!!), in 2003.  

And so, for prep for the concert, I listened to what I could of the new album – Last Place.  A few singles had been floating around for months, and then with less than week to go, NPR had the album in full, streaming.  Normally it takes awhile for an album to work its magic on you (if it has any actual magic to begin with), but in a short amount of time – I felt like the grand(addy) early 2000s had never ended, and this new album felt a year apart from the essential Slump, not 17 years separated

And live?  Oh man, the old stuff was beyond beautiful music to my ears.  And the new stuff?  It fit in-between the old stuff like a glove (not the OJ type of glove, but the one that fits perfectly – like a new glove, or an old glove)!

The show was 17 songs done up in under 90 minutes, but for every minute – I basked in the bestness that was and remains Grandaddy, and escaped back into the early 2000s, which somehow seems like such a simpler, happier time

Setlist - Hewlett’s Daughter / El Caminos in the West / Laughing Stock / Way We Won’t / Disconnecty / Evermore / The Crystal Lake / My Small Love / Levitz / AM 180 / So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky / I Don’t Wanna Live Here Anymore / Everything Beautiful Is Far Away / Now It’s On / He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot

Encore – The Boat is in the Barn / Summer Here Kids

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