Under The Western Freeway

NME - Ranked #27 in NME's 1997 Critics' Poll. Magnet - "...the songs...make you've sense you've been here before. But there's also the feeling that you stumbled through the singed brush of a UFO landing site in some beautiful and mesmerizing alien fertility ritual. And you just can't stop watching..." NME - 8 (out of 10) - "...Grandaddy have the rare knack of juggling the fairly familiar into attractive new formations. The most apposite contemporary reference point is probably Sparklehorse....UNDER THE WESTERN FREEWAY is a strangely excellent album..." NME (12/20-27/97, pp.78-79) - Ranked #27 in NME's 1997 Critics' Poll. NME (11/1/97, p.57) - 8 (out of 10) - "...Grandaddy have the rare knack of juggling the fairly familiar into attractive new formations. The most apposite contemporary reference point is probably Sparklehorse....UNDER THE WESTERN FREEWAY is a strangely excellent album..." Magnet (1-2/98, p.70) - "...the songs...make you've sense you've been here before. But there's also the feeling that you stumbled through the singed brush of a UFO landing site in some beautiful and mesmerizing alien fertility ritual. And you just can't stop watching..." Magnet - "[T]he album has winning fuzz to spare on the driving 'Summer Here Kids' and boasts one of the earliest known utterances of the phrase 'Sorry, not sorry' -- the last line on the album."

Ladies and gentlemen, please hold your calls, we have a winner. Modesto, California's Grandaddy smacks you upside the head with the melodic one-two punch of the opening tracks and seldom lets up after that. Broken-down synthesizers wheeze and squeak out melodies that pass "the old gray whistle test" with a vengeance (i.e. you'll be whistling them for weeks). UNDER THE WESTERN FREEWAY is an auspicious debut. With a couple of big, burly guys that adhere to the TAD school of haute couture and an undeniable vocal similarity to Neil Young, this group is a wonderful, left field surprise.|