The Sophtware Slump

Everyone's favourite madcap, slightly cheesy Americans have returned with the follow-up proper to the brilliant Under The Western Freeway. Jason Lytle and his band of spaced cowboys are back and sounding as delightfully demented as ever.

The wonderfully titled opening track, 'He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot', comes on like Neil Young fronting an amalgamation of the Spiders From Mars and Radiohead, with Michael Nyman conducting the entire affair. Epic in scope and haunting in execution, Grandaddy embrace the bigger picture with all the relish we could have hoped for.

Then there's the bizarre pop whimsy of 'Hewlett's Daughter' or 'The Crystal Lake', complete with more surreal images than a Picasso appreciation society. The background too is full of suitably futuristic blips and bleeps as Grandaddy use everything at their disposal to prove they've got their kitsch in sync.

Meanwhile, the closing 'So You'll Aim Towards The Sky' sounds as delicate and moving as anything they have recorded to date. Taken together with 'Underneath The Weeping Willow', it bookends either side of the album with a sense of genuine feeling, where the songs' very simplicity acts as a perfect foil to the sonic trickery that went before.

The Sophtware Slump brims with a basic humanity that clamours for substance over style.