Five-piece Seat­tle band Great Grand­pa may not be a house­hold name in the UK but hope­ful­ly their next album out 28th March called Patience, Moon­beam, on Run For Cov­er records, will help rem­e­dy that. Great Grand­pa are a reward­ing band to lis­ten to. That’s part­ly down to Alex Men­ne’s warm, coun­try-lean­ing vocals that ani­mate the band’s num­bers, and a rich, eclec­tic mix of songs.

The mate­r­i­al on this con­fi­dent new work encom­pass a vari­ety of gen­res and emo­tions with the mate­r­i­al shift­ing from alt-coun­try to indie to shoegaze, the result of each band mem­ber con­tribut­ing their indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences and cre­ativ­i­ty to the shared project. Patience, Moon­beam was made and com­plet­ed with no lim­i­ta­tions on stu­dio time, allow­ing the songs to devel­op in their own time and evolve naturally.

One of the most arrest­ing – and very visu­al – num­bers is the third track, Junior, which opens with a lazy, sun­ny coun­try feel until the lyrics reveal it’s all about a neigh­bor­hood spat, things get dark­er and the mood shifts – there are ref­er­ences to ‘light crimes with my bud­dies’. The final third opens into a glo­ri­ous­ly full, main­ly instru­men­tal sec­tion, enriched with ban­jo and vio­lin that it’s impos­si­ble not to lose your­self in.

The album’s cen­tre­piece is Doom – the most com­plex song on the album; radi­at­ing a Radio­head feel with its gid­dy swoops, instru­men­tal­ly it gath­ers and coa­lesces before retreat­ing with Men­ne’s rich vocals car­ry­ing the dra­ma of the song. The tri­umphant lat­ter sec­tion takes us into anthemic, lose-your­self, almost prog­gy ter­ri­to­ry that will make this track a high­light when played live.

In con­trast is the floaty, shoegazey trip-hop vibe of Ephemera, a slice of retro beau­ty with a Sneak­er Pimps / Tame Impala feel. The lyrics are intrigu­ing, play­ful, “Tell me, tell me… baby’s got secrets too”.

This album sees Great Grand­pa come back togeth­er after huge life changes for its mem­bers. They had released two albums Plas­tic Cough (2017), fol­lowed by Four of Arrows (2019) when the band’s momen­tum was shat­tered as they all head­ed off for new expe­ri­ences and places, not all music relat­ed. New solo projects beck­oned for some, oth­ers did every­thing from work­ing in pro­duc­tion to open­ing a book­shop. It is five years since the band last came togeth­er to record and this new work is a reflec­tion of that time spent apart. Hav­ing grown up and then worked togeth­er in Seat­tle for a decade they found it easy to slot back into life togeth­er again.

Patience, Moon­beam emerged slow­ly, with the band’s gui­tarist Dylan at the helm of the pro­duc­tion and mix­ing. They exper­i­ment­ed with dif­fer­ent iter­a­tions of a sin­gle song. Says Dylan, “We’re all like indi­vid­ual swing­ing pen­du­lums and every now and then we come into sync for a few rota­tions. Some­times it’s two of us, some­times three of us, often it’s not any of us. But when it does come togeth­er, it’s real­ly beautiful.”

UPDATE: Great Grand­pa are now play­ing live at the Pitch­fork Music Fes­ti­val in Dal­ston, east Lon­don, on 8th Novem­ber. Pitch­fork Music Festival

Patience, Moon­beam by Great Grand­pa, release date 28th March, Run for Cov­er Records
Links: Great Grand­pa / Run for Cov­er Records