Release Date: March 8, 2011
Taking a kaleidoscopic stance on post-rock, Portland-based Grails boast a sound that can easily be described as diverse, though such a description would only begin to scratch the surface. Throughout their career—which started earnestly in 1999—the band has amassed dozens of LPs, each one covering a myriad of sounds and styles.
But while the band may incorporate a number of genres—everything ranging from metal to country to Indian—they’ve consistently found their footing in psychedelia, integrating spaced-out soundscapes into more traditional foundations.
Their latest effort, Deep Politics, continues this approach, with typically sterling results. As ambitious as it is ominous, the album is a difficult yet rewarding foray into an aural mishmash and ranks among the band’s most masterful works to date.
The best of instrumental music opens itself up to be as eclectic as possible. Grails, thankfully, does its best to eschew any formality in favor of a varied and multi-textured sound.
The album boasts a decidedly cinematic aesthetic. Each track paints a vivid picture, as if each one ought to be paired with a particular film genre. “All The Colors of the Dark,” for example, is a clever send up of the soundtrack that accompanies an Italian giallo film of the same name. Bruno Nicolai, an Italian composer, was something of an apprentice to the legendry Ennio Morricone, who scored such classic films as “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”
More than anything, it’s Morricone’s signature touch that seems to finds its way onto most of Deep Politics, with songs like “I Led Three Lives” and the closer “Deep Snow” sounding like they’re taken straight from an acid-washed spaghetti western. The music conjures up images of dusty trails and rolling tumbleweed, of whiskey shots and rusty pistols: in other words, it’s mood music, set to distinctly recognizable iconography.
However, the band doesn’t adhere strictly to this method. Though the go-to tactic is clearly twangy guitars and rolling percussions, there are more tedious elements of glacial sludge metal (“Future Primitive”) and brooding techno music (“Daughter of Bilitis”).
The album teeters on incoherent in spurts—especially when attempting to incorporate elements of Eastern-influenced psych, Ravi Shankar style—but by and large, Grails do an exceptional job of not forcing anything, letting seemingly incongruous textures coexist best as possible.
There’s an organic quality to Deep Politics that keeps the album fluid. It ebbs and flows nicely, rarely sticking on a single idea for too long. Structurally, it follows a typical loud-quiet-loud composition, but the shifts in tone, even when abrupt, seem to come at the most sensible moment. Save for a few examples that lead to speculative head scratching (like the second half of “I Led Three Lives” and the snaky guitar riffs on the spaced-out “Corridors of Power”) the album possesses a kind of organized chaos.
But that’s precisely the point. On Deep Politics, Grails have created an album that accurately be labeled as an experience: that rare kind of “headphones album” that seems to necessitate a dark room and a few lit candles. Even during its more aggravating moments, patience is rewarded with another breathtakingly symphonic blast of noise that cuts through the tension.
Deep Politics is an album that requires rapt attention and repeat listens.
Grails – Deep Politics Tracklist:
- “Future Primitive”
- “All the Colors of the Dark”
- “Corridors of Power”
- “Deep Politics”
- “Daughters of Bilitis”
- “Almost Grew My Hair”
- “I Led Three Lives”
