I’m probably the last person to review the new Grandaddy album, Sumday, but I’m so awed by the band’s range of influences — and the fact that they’re very willing to wear them on their sonic sleeves — that I’m compelled to write. Sumday is an excellent album, in part because it stitches together some of the best bands of the past three + thirty years but also because the gentlemen who play in the band are truly talented instrumentalists that clearly leverage their individual talents and interests in British and American pop for the sake of the overall sound.
Here are their overt influences, in order of importance, off the top of my little head.
– The Beatles
– Flaming Lips
– Luna
– Galaxy 500
– New Pornographers
– The Beach Boys
– The Cars
– ELO
– Pavement
– Simple Minds
– The Waterboys
– Night Ranger
– Foreigner
– Moby
– Big Country
– INXS
– Velvet Underground
– The Psychedelic Furs
– Cheap Trick
– Thomas Dolby
There’s also one other band from the 80s that I cannot for the life of me recall — their initials was like INXS but they sung high-pitched, sad-sweet songs; not Soft Cell, not OMD, not Tears for Fears but British nonethelesss.