Hailing from the small town of Modesto, North California, Grandaddy are five, fine facially hirsute - but not in a bad ZZ Top way - young men who caused quite a rumpus in 2000 with their internationally acclaimed LP 'The Sophtware Slump'.
A mix of melodic, country-tinged rock and battered electronic flourishes, 'Sophtware''s concept opus used crumbling technology as a metaphor for doomed relationships and won them many friends and comparisons with the likes of The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and Pavement.
'Sumday' inhabits the same territory as its predecessor, with its tales of stagnant lives and dashed dreams in a small town patrolled by carloads of kids with beer and cigarettes. Stories of people 'Who Lost The Go In The Go-For-It' or as songwriter Jason Lytle's beautifully plaintive whisper sighs on 'I'm On Standby': "Bye...I'm on standby, out of order or sort of unaligned, powered down for redesign." Hell, even the cars in Modesto are failures. In the synthy shuffle of 'Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake': "There's a shitty limousine parked in front of the bar, that never got to drive any movie stars."
There are heart-melting harmonies, tinny drum machines, fuzzy chugging guitars, something that sounds like Rolf Harris's Stylophone and of course there's Lytle's gorgeously emotive vocal. There's even wry humour, as on 'The Group Who Wouldn't Say' - an anecdote about a bunch of computer geeks on a team-building weekend in the countryside, woefully out of their depth amidst the pines and dragonflies of the great outdoors.
There are nods to Lennon's 'Imagine' ('The Warming Sun') and Ben Folds ('Saddest Vacant Lot In All The World') and ELO (album closer 'The Final Push To The Sum') while the spirit of the Lips, Teenage Fanclub, Neil Young and Sparklehorse linger elsewhere.
The only slump in 'Sumday' comes with its lack of musical variation. While in solitude, each track is a gem, things just chug along pleasantly, each song merging into the next, like a relentless row of roadside telegraph poles on a long drive through the flat, unchanging Californian desert. But perhaps that's the point.
Yes the beards are back. And that's a very good thing. It really is. It's just not quite as great as some of us dared to hope.
