Sometimes inventing tags with Last.fm’s radio software can reveal some fascinating discoveries. I believe it was “country-disco” matched with “rave” that reeled in two Gram Rabbit tracks on the trot. A band I’d originally dismissed, quite fairly I thought on the grounds of their name, had suddenly caught the honour of my full attention by their willingly spare associations.
As far as straight-up contemporarily “conscious” indie music goes, Gram Rabbit pull some interestingly iridescent songs. Putting their name and desert origins to one side, for I haven’t bothered looking up what it’s about, just in terms of their appearance Gram Rabbit would scare the shit out of anyone conventionally country. It’s a fearful snarling abound in their image that transpires quite appropriately into their music—with lots of deep-voice male hymning cherry-topped with female vocals wilfully dry.
How better for their journey to start, than sharpening knives on “Dirty Horse.” Bound in a good degree of lyrical ambiguity, not so much pathetically mysterious as genuinely intriguing, they paint on a dry canvas of strumming acoustics that when striking together, produce a refreshingly lush sound. Their eventually tiring lulling fatalism is nothing much more profound on most of the rest of the album, yet hidden in Music to Start a Cult To is the quite brilliant “Cowboys & Aliens.” Its appeal wasn’t immediately obvious to me, but perhaps some of its overtly guilty indie elements will win you over more immediately. Creeping up on you are some BIG, VIVID sounds that wash with some freer, less earnest sensibilities, only to end it all too abruptly.
Naturally, there is nothing merely country nor disco about Gram Rabbit, but an element of self-parody and addictive pysch-Americana drenches some dull arrangements into something actually quite valuable and interesting. A lighter grey is, yes, breaking through a darker one.
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