If you've read this blog in chronological order, you would've already observed a number of patterns. A lot of my all time favourites have become such through personal circumstances, and many have also come about through certain individuals who've introduced me to certain bands or albums. If you were expecting something different with this entry, then I'm afraid I'm about to disappoint you. If you're reading this backwards (latest to earliest entry), then some of the following may not make sense straight away.
Around 1999-ish, the friend who'd introduced me to me to the music of Suicide (yes, him again) also introduced me to a friend of his, with whom I eventually started making music. He lived with his girlfriend in a small seaside town very close to me, and on a Sunday, I'd take a half hour bus ride to his place where we'd record experimental lo-fi weirdness on a digital 4-track he had. That lasted for the best part of a year before other commitments on his end halted our project. We still kept in touch, however and I would still go to see him from time to time. Not only was this guy an incredibly adept musician in his own right, he listened to a lot of interesting music, and would often play some of it for me whenever I visited him. And this was how I first heard of Grandaddy.
For my birthday that year, and I went out with him and his mates for a few drinks in town before gathering on the beach at night to smoke under the stars. At some point over that weekend, he played me some Grandaddy. He knew I'd like them, owing largely to their fondness for playing around with toy keyboards (a fondness I also shared) and their lo-fi indie pop aesthetic.
'Under the Western Freeway' became an album I liked pretty much straight away. When my friend introduced this, I recall him forewarning me that they could "be a bit maudlin at times"; I didn't mind that at all though, given that I often find myself drawn to sadness in music (paradoxically, I find that indulging such emotions helps keep me centered). In the case of UTWF, the album largely came to me during a fantastic birthday weekend at the height of summer. As such, even its sadder songs strangely worked by virtue of their contextual association, even if they may not have fit the overall mood. Either way, it was hard to deny that it was an incredible album for me.
From this, I started digging into the band's back catalogue and found myself enamoured with their lo-fi, experimental indie-pop that placed them in the same family as many other bands that I enjoyed (Pavement being an obvious example). In fact 'Levitz', a track from one of their earlier EPs is actually one of my all time favoruite songs.
A year later, they released their commercial breakthrough 'The Sophtware Slump' which is largely considered their best album. And yes, it is a great record (albeit tidier and cleaner), but 'Western Freeway' is the one that's stayed with me. Unfortunately, they did lose me after that with the largely forgettable 'Sumday' (shorn of the experimental quirkiness of before, many of its songs are quite MOR to these ears), but I will always remember 'Under the Western Freeway' for introducing me to a band I later came to cherish and laud in equal measure.
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