Unobtrusive and irresistible: Grant Lee Buffalo
No experiments. The second work by the trio from Los Angeles also shines with the same virtues that made last year's excellent debut "Fuzzy" stand out from the flood of similar releases: with its mainstay firmly based on country and folk, singer and guitarist Grant Lee Phillips, bassman Paul Kimple and Drummer Joey Peters gives her a leg up in wild fuzz orgies. Since then, REM's Michael Stipe has called GLB his favorite band, and Pearl Jam hired the newcomers as the opening act for their '93 US tour. With the vicious single "America Snoring", Grant Lee Buffalo finally achieved their first respectable success in the charts.
After such a debut, it's no wonder: the thirteen new pieces from "Mighty Joe Moon" are a continuation of "Fuzzy" with exactly the same means. The acoustic guitar, which Grant Lee Phillips plays throughout, suddenly jumps from frothy picking to painful beating, the drums just sound like they were being played with a brush, only to suddenly tip over into a stuttering staccato. In addition, the voice of singer Phillips, still more reminiscent of David Byrne's nervous organ than Neil Young's soft whimpers, and compositions that are consistently more oriented towards Calvin Russell than REM.
The progress that the Buffaloes have made in the last few months is still unmistakable. In contrast to "Fuzzy", "Mighty Joe Moon" is a piece of music as if it were all of a piece. What at first sounds like another insignificant attempt to mix folk and blues and college rock into colorless L.A. neo-folk gradually turns out to be a stroke of genius without any hang-ups. Starting with the opener "Lonestar Song", which combines violent verses with a quiet, shrugging chorus, to the central "It's The Life", in which a classic picking guitar takes a melancholic stock of a life somehow spent, to the final " Rock Of Ages", a quiet two-chord story about going away and returning, the second GLB album sneaks up as if from ambush - unobtrusively. Irresistible.
In Grant Lee's typical mix of go-go bar music, country ballads and grunge elements, no note is too much. Every note fits, every sparse harmonic sequence develops exactly the intended effect. Supported by the minimal line-up of guitar, bass and drums, the three Californians whirl under their dreamy melodies, sometimes volcanic noise eruptions like in the title track, sometimes a squeaky little harmonica like in the "Lonestar Song". Sometimes a cello shimmering in from the distance, a melting slide guitar or a banjo provide variety.
But "Mighty Joe Moon", produced by bassist Paul Kimble, never seems overloaded, always remains a transparent accompaniment for band leader Phillips, who looks like a mustache but develops an almost hypnotic power with his insinuating vocals that oscillate between whispers and screams. No choirs, no keyboards, hardly any overdubs. Foregoing all studio gimmicks, Grant Lee Buffalo conjure up folk rock to perfection with ten strings, two drumsticks and one voice.
It's folk rock in perfection... till today.
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