There has always been a lot of mystery surrounding The Grapes. They certainly don’t go out of their way to advertise their presence in the music scene. When I first discovered them in the summer of 2012, I had to spend hours scouring the internet for information on this band. The most I could ever find besides their two (known) releases on their bandcamp page was a few music videos, and a live video from a performance at The Cave. The mysteriousness behind the music that I instantly fell in love with only added to their ultra-lofi/DIY image.
If you haven’t heard The Grapes before, I highly encourage you to check out their first two releases.. It was long thought that the band broke up for good in 2012, and having hardly any activity since a reunion show in the summer of 2013, it definitely solidified the rumor amongst their fans. However, the band quietly released a brand new album on September 1st, 2014.
With this latest album, featuring 11 brand new tracks, The Grapes take their music in a new direction. Instead of their usual two piece, nitty-gritty, loud and erratic lofi gold, this album is considerably slower, less noisy, and much more sophisticated musically. Lyrically, we follow the same well spoken (or sung) narrator as he lives his life in college, but still deals with all the same self-loathing and girl related issues he dealt with in high school. The Grapes always offer humor at the foreground of their lyrics, with dark emotional torment sitting right behind. This can be best found in tracks like “Teen Girl Song” and “Frat Boys”.
With the release of this album, the band also welcomes Chris Palmour to join the original members, Jeremy and Brett. I’m very excited to see where the band goes with the release of this album. I can only hope that it includes some shows this fall, but of course, they’ll probably be so secret I won’t even know about them.