Grandchildren
BRM has done it again. We've hunted down, captured and documented the most innovative and exciting artists to recently emerge on a number of different scenes. All month long we’ll be running interviews with our discoveries to help get you ready for what’s to come in 2010. But to get a complete look at our full list of emerging artists, check out our current winter issue.
Grandchildren are old friends and new based around Philadelphia and their West Philly DIY space, Danger Danger Gallery. What was once Danger Danger House, hosting local and touring bands, has become a larger Gallery that continues to host bands (such as Growing, Calvin Johnson, and The Slits) while also featuring visual artists. This perfectly compliments Grandchildren’s artistic scope, as many of the members are artists and painters themselves.
Although most of the guys have been playing with one another in some form or another, such as in the band Rad Racket, for the better part of the decade, it’s only been recently that these six musicians formed Grandchildren. The band began as a side project, with Aleks Martray as the driving writing force. At first trombone heavy, the guys rerecorded and rearranged songs until they worked out the eccentric sound they wanted to create.
Borrowing from the contemporary sound and neo-tribal nature pioneered by Animal Collective as well as Latin American music (due to Martray’s stay in Nicaragua for an art program), Grandchildren’s songs feel worldly, indie, and psychedelic. Tris Palazzolo attempts to explain, “For the most part, it’s this mélange of stuff that we’re constantly experimenting with, playing to precorded stuff and getting more organic with things and also getting more electronic and doing both at the same time…we started out building lush landscapes of music with the help of looping, and the loop pedal gave way to more prerecorded sample beats.” All the while, the band never forgets what a song really is: that three or four minute pop gem that someone can move to.
The guys have been doing a hefty amount of touring, driving their van all across the continental U.S.A., from The Smell in L.A. to Tipsy Teapot in North Carolina. They just signed with the label Green Owl, on which they will soon release their debut album, Cold Warrior. Though their well-practiced live shows are absolutely flawless, it may seem strange that they can even pull off playing such multilayered songs out of the studio.
Palazzolo explains, “The album itself had thirty separate tracks on each song…we wanted to have as many of those layers live [because] we don’t want it to be glorified karaoke, we want it to move people but at the same time we want to be moving around too. When it comes to the horn parts, you can either omit them or you can try to play them live, but if you’re playing that live, you can’t also play the drums or the bass when you’re doing that. The horn parts are only in one part of the song so you want to just go back to what you’re playing; I think it lends itself to an engaging live show. All the instruments on the album were played by us, so we might as well play as much as we can live. It’s definitely fun!”
On stage, the guys sprint between instruments. Their performances are an undulating string of songs that hit epic highs and lows, and the members always look like they’re having the time of their lives, no matter how big or small the show. Placing organic, live performances on top of their prerecorded, electronic sounds offers “a lot of depth and a lot of malleability.”
In addition to playing guitar, bass, and other instruments, mostly everyone participates in the choral singing, and four of the members (Palazzolo, Russell Brodie, Adam Katz, and Roman Salcic) take turns drumming, sometimes two at the same time, in perfect sync. Martray, as the primary singer, mans the acoustic guitar, and John Vogel takes to the keys. As Palazzolo points out, “We’re the six-man band trying to be a thirty-man band.” Who says ambition never gets you anywhere?
Words by Amy Dupcak
Photo by Tiffany Yoon
Come check out Grandchildren at BRM's Emerging Artists showcase and magazine release party this Thursday at BLVD.
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