Legendary indie-rock band Grandaddy will release their brand new studio album Blu Wav on February 16, 2024 via Dangerbird Records. Today, they reveal the meditative country-tinged indie rock invitation to visit prolific storyteller Jason Lytle’s “Cabin in My Mind”.
Released alongside an official video, he shares, “A while back I was traveling with a friend, doing some shows and just riffing, and he came up with this phrase. It made so much sense to me and had so many things just within the title itself: shutting off and just, like, going inward. It’s fun to imagine literally a cabin inside your mind. ‘I’m out of here, see ya, guys’ and you walk in the front door, shut the door and disappear for a while.’ It was perfect like an old country song where the title says everything. I remembered the phrase, and it was easy for me to pick it up and just make it work.”
Blu Wav is inspired by the overwhelming beauty of nature to the mundane moments that spark life’s strongest memories. With the album title meant to be a literal mash-up of “bluegrass” and “new wave”, the new collection has a distinct feel, a uniform vibe, and a somewhat unexpected sound. It was conceived as Grandaddy maestro Jason Lytle was driving through the Nevada desert, and Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz” came across the classic country station on the radio. He was immediately intrigued by the possibilities of what it might sound like to keep the slow sway and sweet, simple lyrics of the bluegrass waltz while adding layers of dense synthesizers and the electronics of new wave. It incorporates the lo-fi lushness and sometimes-psychedelic orchestration Grandaddy is known for with Lytle’s first foray into true country. Seven of its 13 songs are waltzes, and as Lytle notes, “there’s an inordinate amount of pedal steel.”
Grandaddy recently celebrated their legacy with a series of 20th anniversary reissues including the acclaimed Sumday Twunny box set which earned a Pitchfork ‘Best New Reissue”. Lytle also contributed vocals to a posthumous Sparklehorse album by request of his friend and fellow psychedelic pop auteur Mark Linkous’ family. Grandaddy has released five official LPs, most recently 2017’s Last Place. Grandaddy members include Jason Lytle, Aaron Burtch, Jim Fairchild, Tim Dryden, and the late Kevin Garcia, who passed away in 2017.
