Grandaddy - 'Just like The Fambly Cat' (V2) Released 15/05/06

And now, the end is here. After ten years of lo-fi indie brilliance Grandaddy have called it a day and leave us ‘Just Like The Fambly Cat’ as their epitaph. Undoubtedly a great album, it’s hard not to listen to Fambly Cat without getting all retrospective and pondering the highlights of their sparkling career like the tour-de-force single ‘A.M 180’ and 2000’s masterpiece ‘The Software Slump.’ Okay, while it’s perhaps unfair to expect our bearded heroes to quite reach those dizzy zeniths yet again, there’s plenty within this album to remind us why we love Grandaddy so.

Beginning with the cute utterances of a young child asking “What happened to the Fambly cat?”, the abrasive (well, by Gandaddy’s standards) ‘Jeez Louise’ hits us with through a guitar haze and Jason Lytle’s surprisingly urgent delivery – perhaps sign that the band were adamant not to go out with a whimper. Soon we’re into stripped down, serotonin inducing melodies a la ‘Summer… It’s Gone’ and the synth saturated, gorgeous ‘Rear View Mirror.’ But, it’s when Grandaddy do something inimitable that they excel – the brief ‘Oxygen/Auxsend’ is all shimmering pianos melodies and sighing refrains almost permeated through an old gramophone, while the instrumental ‘Skateboarding Saves Me Twice’ with its wide-eyed electronic hook is astoundingly affecting.

Occasionally, the album does drift into safe territory – ie the wistful ‘Where I’m Anymore’ and ‘Guide Down Denied’ are extremely Grandaddy by numbers – yet tunes like the punk dirge of ‘50%’ and the spiky, Casio keyboard driven ‘Elevate Myself’ soon make you forget such minor quibbles. It all ends on a high with the confident chorus of ‘Disconnecty’ and the ambient swansong ‘This Is How It Always Starts’, before they ultimately bow out with the swirling, operetta imbued ‘secret’ track. One things for sure, Grandaddy are going to be sorely missed.