o be clear: Concrete Dunes can only be considered a new Grandaddy album in the loosest sense. Neither the content, the artwork, nor the title (which is a slightly amusing parody of the bands pre-occupation with the juxtaposition of technology and nature) have been authorized by the band, and only two tracks here, "Why Would I Want to Die" and "12-pak-599" are previously unreleased. One does not normally think of labels milking the minor successes of lo-fi indie groups, but apparently it happens.


Despite some minor sequencing rearrangements, Concrete Dunes is more or less a disguised repackaging of the band's earlier b-sides collection, Broken Down Comforter Collection, as that album's 12 tracks make up the fast majority of this one (the 15th track is "My Small Love", previously only available on the UK-single Summer Here Kids). Which means it's a great listen: while they've yet to put out a wholly consistent album, and lack the virtuosity of some of their atmospheric pop contemporaries (The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev), they write songs as well as any of these, and the quality barely slips from the album tracks to the b-sides you'll find here.


These are old songs, however (some, like "Away Birdies With Special Sounds") come from their original demo release), and so listeners coming from the direction of The Sophtware Slump are likely to be surprised by the immaturity occasionally found, both lyrically and in the willingness to engage in lo-fi clichés in order to cover up slightly weaker melodies. It is relevant to remember that at this stage Grandaddy were still getting compared to Pavement rather than the Flaming Lips: This is reflected in the sound, although Jason Lytle's lyrics are in no sense stream-of-consciousness.


An example is the album's centerpiece "For the Dishwasher". A gorgeous song, and long time fan favorite, its lyrics ("Ride your bike all night/and give your heart a break/and give your head a shove/and fuck that subject love") would be highly anomalous on the band's more recent material. Other tracks ("Kim, You Bore Me to Death", the softly beautiful "Gentle Spike Resort") are more fully formed and thematically evolved. Still others are just ludicrous: the exaggerated caricatures of "Fentry" and "Sikh in a Baja VW Bug" are sillier than anything else the band has released, and quite slight besides.


It's easy to forgive these less satisfying tracks, however, as they are pleasant enough to not disrupt the flow of the album, and as a b-side collection, Concrete Dunes is of such a greater consistency than similar collections put out many other bands that it seems unfair to judge it on faults inherent to the medium. The only thing holding it back from a reccomendation is that the band doesn't want it released, and that's not neccessarily a very good reason. Obviously pick up both of the bands albums first, and if you are of the sort to value the artistic intentions of the author, you may want to pick up Broken Down Comforter Collection and miss out on the pretty but non-essential extra tracks found here. If you decide that you can't go without, however, Concrete Dunes is a worthy, if poorly named, purchased.