Grant Lee Buffalo: The sound of backyard America

Grant Lee Philips, a few years after "Fuzzy"*

It's been years and years since rock music was still important and had great relevance. Artists were not pop bunnies who sang with computer voices, but stars with guitars, poets, explainers of the world.

Now let's listen to "Fuzzy", the great album by the US band Grant Lee Buffalo.

An album that 30 years ago seemed like a small but highly effective poison against all trends and fashions. Singer Grant Lee Philips' band's record contained eleven timelessly beautiful song gems. The sound of sunny California, more precisely Los Angeles. But neither grunge nor hard rock, no pop and no metal.

The trio spent three years on the club scene trying to stay afloat. Bandleader Grant Lee Philips described the ordeal: “One night we played go-go music, the next we played sophisticated dandy pop. But at the end of every show there was the pure Buffalo sound: romantic folk songs, rebellious rock hymns and strolling West Coast ballads."

The scenario of the band's sound is that backyard America that was already peeking out of the grooves of early Springsteen - tired of highways, billiards sheds and shabby back rooms with Al Capone photographs on the holey walls. So nothing that hasn't already existed. Nevertheless, soulful, palatable Southern songs like “Dixie Drug Store” will warm the heart of every true melancholic.

The Buffalos' drums are primarily worked with brushes, and the piano conjures up sparkling runs of beguiling beauty. Together with Philip's unmistakable voice, this creates the stuff American dreams are made of.