VERY kind review from the very talented and astute Stuyvesant Parker at Staires.org. apparently Grand & Noble is only the second of countless bands that have submitted work to him that he actually reviewed.
if you have a moment, please do give this a read.
ALSO, feel free to make all the little hearts on this hypemachine page happy by clicking them and making them blush.
Introducing: Grand & Noble
It’s not often I get a submission in my email box that actually excites me. The last one was Ha Ha Tonka and that was over two years ago. Grand & Noble truly excites me, and in just about the same way that Ha Ha Tonka did, so you could say that they’re in great company. My first reaction after hearing this album was: man, these guys are just one album away from being huge.
They get so many things right: vocalist Jonathan Elling has a dynamic voice, capable of both being smooth and gruff when necessary, sometimes it even sounds like he’s two different people. 99% of the time his voice soars over the music and it’s an absolute pleasure to listen to. The production and the playing is clean, a bit too clean for my tastes most of the time, but that’s just my taste and not really a fault of the album. On a song like This Light(the play button below). The slick production leads to the great feeling of the space they’re playing in, and the moments of silence where you can truly hear it only adds to the feeling of the song.
Grand & Noble’s style of music isn’t quite my thing. I like my poppy folk rock a little gruffer, a little rougher around the edges. When they emailed me, they said that they do well with fans of “Spoon, Wilco, the National, Neko Case”, and that’s why my opinion is this: this is a great album, one that you should pay for, and one that you’ll get a lot of enjoyment out of, but I’m sure their next album is going to be even better. Spoon, Wilco, and even The National all have that ineffable organic feeling to their music, and that’s the one feeling that is lacking a little on this album. There’s no dirt rubbed into it, no stains on the collar, and it’d go a long way for me if it did. (And while almost every song is great, for me there aren’t any really strong hooks, nothing I’m singing in my head after the album is over, and I’m not sure what that means!)
My minor criticisms aside, this is a band I would be willing to bet money on their success. For a debut album, they get everything right. They cover enough genres and styles, from straight up Rock ‘n Roll in the vein of Elvis Costello, semi-country rock that reminds me of Ha Ha Tonka, to heartfelt folky ballads and small prog-rock guitar solo freakouts, that they prove can do it all and who knows which direction they’ll settle into in the future. Elling’s voice is only going to get better with age, it’s already excellent as it is, and his multi-instrumentalist partner Stukel’s playing sounds like the perfect compliment to it.
You can get their album from their website, and you don’t even have to pay for it if you want a personal copy, but I think you and I agree that they probably deserve at least a couple of your dollars. Invest in the future! Someone better suited should be getting all the attention Mumford & Sons and Edward Douche & The Magnetic Zeroes are getting. It should probably be these guys.
