Grand Buffet review in Stylus today, another one I worked kinda hard on because I'm a big fan and I wanted to get it right. I've talked about them a little bit here before, and they really are great live, so I might reccomend seeing them before checking out the CD, and they happen to be touring the whole country in the next couple months.
Note: In light of the end of Stylus in 2007, I decided to archive the text of all my reviews for the site on this blog for posterity, since I don't what the future holds for the Stylus domain, and have included both the letter grade ratting that accompanied the original review, and an adjusted rating that I would give the record now in retrospect.
Grand Buffet
Five Years Of Fireworks
Fighting
2005
Stylus rating: B+
Adjusted rating by reviewer: A-
Five Years Of Fireworks is a greatest hits album by a group you’ve probably never heard of. Since the late 90’s, the Pittsburgh duo Grand Buffet have been honing their deeply silly strain of indie rap in obscurity. And for their first national release available somewhere other than the group’s own website and live shows, they’ve assembled a package including a DVD and a retrospective collection featuring highlights from the 2000 album Sparkle Classic and the trilogy of EPs Undercover Angels (2001), Cigarette Beach (2002) and Pittsburgh Hearts (2003).
Grand Buffet have amassed their small cult of followers through constant touring, often opening for fellow white indie rappers such as Sage Francis and Sole. But Grand Buffet project no trace of the seriousness or messiah complexes of their tourmates. If anything, they’re more Bloodhound Gang than Anticon. It’s hard to tell when, if ever, anything that Lord Grunge and Grape-A-Don do or say is meant to be taken seriously. Their concerts often seem like elaborate put-ons, wherein they seem to change nicknames (Fred Durts and Mr. Pennsylvania, M-Dog and Iguanadon, Matt and Nate Kukla) from night to night and make constant inside jokes and tongue in cheek speeches.
Instead of the dusty jazz samples or herky-jerky IDM production touches typical to undie rap, Grand Buffet’s beats, produced mostly by Jarrod Brandon Weeks (a.k.a. Lord Grunge), seem to draw their inspiration largely from synth pop. Big, glistening keyboard riffs and four-on-the-floor dance beats are a strangely appropriate backdrop for their surreal raps, delivered mostly by Jackson O’Connell-Barlow (a.k.a. Grape-A-Don). And if he rapped slowly, awkwardly, or like the Sugar Hill Gang, Grand Buffet would never rise above novelty, the kind of cringe-inducing joke rap that only people who don’t actually like hip hop could enjoy. But Grape-A-Don is a stunningly dexterous MC, winding absurd, intricate stories into every verse, like the most inane, nonsensical daydream fully realized. Whether he does a disservice to his own skills by filling his dense rhymes with pop culture references and juvenile jokes is up for debate.
Grand Buffet’s scatalogical sense of humor is on full display on “Double Crazy,” which is literally about eating shit, and “1000 Percent,” in which Lord Grunge admits to crapping his pants. Two songs, “Cool As Hell” and “You’re On Fire,” are about going to hell and pledging allegiance to Satan, which brings us another component of Grand Buffet’s humor: their constant ridicule of Christian conservatives. I can think of few things I’d want to hear less than middle class liberals sarcastically lampooning rural Republican stereotypes. But I just couldn’t help but howl with laughter the first time I heard “Americus (Religious Right Rock),” which sarcastically lays out the following platform of opinions: “We’re not holier than thou, but holy cow! / There’s people doing stuff God would never allow! / Like guys kissing guys, and poor people too / There’s plenty of jobs, find something to do!”. Occasionally they do sneak some sincere political commentary into their songs, though, with the environmentalist stance of lines like “they trample the vegetation with their ATVs / So now they’re fucking with the ghost of Johnny Appleseed,” from “Cool As Hell”.
Like the previous releases it draws from, Five Years Of Fireworks clocks in at under 35 minutes, and every song runs under 3 minutes. Grand Buffet know better than run any one joke into the ground. In the liner notes to last year’s 50-minute rarities compilation Dicer: The Unheard Funk Tracks, they swore “this is NOT an album. We will NEVER make an album this goddamned long.” Still, for a career retrospective, they could’ve included more, and longtime fans my cry foul at the omission of favorites (no “We’re Into This”? no “Nate Kukla’s History of Lemonade”?). Though the tracks are not presented in chronological order, there is evidence of progress. The vocal distortion on early songs like “Candy Bars” smacks of an adolescence spent listening to Check Your Head. But later tracks from Pittsburgh Hearts and the only previously unreleased song on the collection, the bizarre battle cry “Birdwater Highway,” are among the best on the album.
What makes Five Years a worthy purchase for fans and newcomers alike is the DVD. Nearly an hour of live footage, culled from over a dozen different shows from throughout Grand Buffet’s career, is perhaps more likely to convince nonbelievers than the album. Favorites like “Pink Deadly” and “Candy Bars” really are best seen and heard as they’re delivered in concert. Between that highlight reel and the CD, this is a nearly perfect introduction to the world of Grand Buffet. The motto once emblazoned on their early self-released discs—“No Label. No Fans. No Problem.”—has been replaced on Five Years Of Fireworks by “Label. Fans. Problem.” Judging by this, they may have to get ready for a lot more of each.
Reviewed by: Al Shipley
Reviewed on: 2005-08-04
Note: In light of the end of Stylus in 2007, I decided to archive the text of all my reviews for the site on this blog for posterity, since I don't what the future holds for the Stylus domain, and have included both the letter grade ratting that accompanied the original review, and an adjusted rating that I would give the record now in retrospect.
Grand Buffet
Five Years Of Fireworks
Fighting
2005
Stylus rating: B+
Adjusted rating by reviewer: A-
Five Years Of Fireworks is a greatest hits album by a group you’ve probably never heard of. Since the late 90’s, the Pittsburgh duo Grand Buffet have been honing their deeply silly strain of indie rap in obscurity. And for their first national release available somewhere other than the group’s own website and live shows, they’ve assembled a package including a DVD and a retrospective collection featuring highlights from the 2000 album Sparkle Classic and the trilogy of EPs Undercover Angels (2001), Cigarette Beach (2002) and Pittsburgh Hearts (2003).
Grand Buffet have amassed their small cult of followers through constant touring, often opening for fellow white indie rappers such as Sage Francis and Sole. But Grand Buffet project no trace of the seriousness or messiah complexes of their tourmates. If anything, they’re more Bloodhound Gang than Anticon. It’s hard to tell when, if ever, anything that Lord Grunge and Grape-A-Don do or say is meant to be taken seriously. Their concerts often seem like elaborate put-ons, wherein they seem to change nicknames (Fred Durts and Mr. Pennsylvania, M-Dog and Iguanadon, Matt and Nate Kukla) from night to night and make constant inside jokes and tongue in cheek speeches.
Instead of the dusty jazz samples or herky-jerky IDM production touches typical to undie rap, Grand Buffet’s beats, produced mostly by Jarrod Brandon Weeks (a.k.a. Lord Grunge), seem to draw their inspiration largely from synth pop. Big, glistening keyboard riffs and four-on-the-floor dance beats are a strangely appropriate backdrop for their surreal raps, delivered mostly by Jackson O’Connell-Barlow (a.k.a. Grape-A-Don). And if he rapped slowly, awkwardly, or like the Sugar Hill Gang, Grand Buffet would never rise above novelty, the kind of cringe-inducing joke rap that only people who don’t actually like hip hop could enjoy. But Grape-A-Don is a stunningly dexterous MC, winding absurd, intricate stories into every verse, like the most inane, nonsensical daydream fully realized. Whether he does a disservice to his own skills by filling his dense rhymes with pop culture references and juvenile jokes is up for debate.
Grand Buffet’s scatalogical sense of humor is on full display on “Double Crazy,” which is literally about eating shit, and “1000 Percent,” in which Lord Grunge admits to crapping his pants. Two songs, “Cool As Hell” and “You’re On Fire,” are about going to hell and pledging allegiance to Satan, which brings us another component of Grand Buffet’s humor: their constant ridicule of Christian conservatives. I can think of few things I’d want to hear less than middle class liberals sarcastically lampooning rural Republican stereotypes. But I just couldn’t help but howl with laughter the first time I heard “Americus (Religious Right Rock),” which sarcastically lays out the following platform of opinions: “We’re not holier than thou, but holy cow! / There’s people doing stuff God would never allow! / Like guys kissing guys, and poor people too / There’s plenty of jobs, find something to do!”. Occasionally they do sneak some sincere political commentary into their songs, though, with the environmentalist stance of lines like “they trample the vegetation with their ATVs / So now they’re fucking with the ghost of Johnny Appleseed,” from “Cool As Hell”.
Like the previous releases it draws from, Five Years Of Fireworks clocks in at under 35 minutes, and every song runs under 3 minutes. Grand Buffet know better than run any one joke into the ground. In the liner notes to last year’s 50-minute rarities compilation Dicer: The Unheard Funk Tracks, they swore “this is NOT an album. We will NEVER make an album this goddamned long.” Still, for a career retrospective, they could’ve included more, and longtime fans my cry foul at the omission of favorites (no “We’re Into This”? no “Nate Kukla’s History of Lemonade”?). Though the tracks are not presented in chronological order, there is evidence of progress. The vocal distortion on early songs like “Candy Bars” smacks of an adolescence spent listening to Check Your Head. But later tracks from Pittsburgh Hearts and the only previously unreleased song on the collection, the bizarre battle cry “Birdwater Highway,” are among the best on the album.
What makes Five Years a worthy purchase for fans and newcomers alike is the DVD. Nearly an hour of live footage, culled from over a dozen different shows from throughout Grand Buffet’s career, is perhaps more likely to convince nonbelievers than the album. Favorites like “Pink Deadly” and “Candy Bars” really are best seen and heard as they’re delivered in concert. Between that highlight reel and the CD, this is a nearly perfect introduction to the world of Grand Buffet. The motto once emblazoned on their early self-released discs—“No Label. No Fans. No Problem.”—has been replaced on Five Years Of Fireworks by “Label. Fans. Problem.” Judging by this, they may have to get ready for a lot more of each.
Reviewed by: Al Shipley
Reviewed on: 2005-08-04
Labels: Grand Buffet, some shit I wrote, Stylus
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