Product Description

'Just Like the Fambly Cat' is the posthumous album by Modesto's finest ever band, Grandaddy. Combining elements of bands such as ELO and Mercury Rev in a lo-fi fashion, this albumis a fine finish to a fantastic run of albums by the Californian indie heroes. Includes the single 'Elevate Myself'.

Track Listing

1. What Happened
2. Jeez Louise
3. Summer It's Gone
4. Oxygen/Aux Send
5. Rear View Mirror
6. Animal World
7. Skateboarding Saves Me Twice
8. Where I'm Anymore
9. 50%
10. Guide Down Denied
11. Elevate Myself
12. Campershell Dreams
13. Disconnecty
14. This Is How It Always Starts

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38455 in Music
• Released on: 2006-05-15
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
If ever there were a band built to fade away rather than burn out, Grandaddy were it. For all their many highs they nearly always sounded like the batteries were running low. Sumday, their last album proper, especially was the sound of a band bumbling towards a dusty horizon with a squiffy smile and a tranquilizer dart hanging from a main artery. So to meet a resurgent Grandaddy is not only surprising, it also verges on cruel--they already have one foot out of the door following their split earlier this year. This goodbye album, in the context of the band alone, is remarkable for its success rate, not to mention its pulse. It makes a pretty bold statement in the context of the wider world too.

It may not be directly comparable to their hermetically-sealed psychedelic masterpiece The Sophtware Slump, but it does draw brightly from all aspects of their existence and feels like it's sticking right behind the pace-maker. It doesn't slump once. "Jeez Louise" is old school Flaming Lips weird pop with the wind in their beards and the phaser guns out; "Summer.. It's Gone" is a gorgeous weightless acoustic ditty; "Rear View Mirror" is a box of 70s rock riffs in space and "Skateboarding Saves Me Twice" sounds like a synthesised Belle & Sebastian backing track on laughing gas. As posthumous releases go it is a triumph and needn't just rely on the charity of loyal completists.--James Berry

Customer Reviews

Pure Americana...
One facet of Grandaddy's music is consistently overlooked by critics and reviewers: that this is profoundly *American* music; it is the truest expression and "sound" of a warm American Summertime afternoon since Pet Sounds, complete with lawn mowers, sprinklers spinning around, and crickets in the cool evening. Grandaddy owe more to The Band, Big Star, the Velvets, Dylan, Gram Parsons, and the 13th Floor Elevators than they do Radiohead, the Flaming Lips, and Mercury Rev.

And this, their final LP, is easily as good as anything in their back catalog, though, as everyone notes, it is more complex, more inaccessible, and generally harder to "get". They seem to have pulled out all the stops to be as sonically bold and challenging as possible, and it certainly pays off to the careful listener.

One of the few genuinely *important* bands of the last 25 years...

What happened? A moronic public, that's what!
And so Grandaddy pass off into the sunset, beaten by apathy. Thankfully they aren't going with the tail between their legs. Just Like the Fambly Cat is a mighty roar of a final album, when all that could have been expected was a whimper.

The signs didn't look good for this final album, what with the band on the verge of splitting up and last year's mini-album Excerpts From the Diary of Todd Zilla being a lacklustre effort saved by two or three tunes. Add to this the fact that the band's last full length album Sumday was easily their worst, too bloated and plodding after the frankly thrilling first two efforts, and it looked as if this once great band were going to destroy the good reputation they had deservedly built for themselves.

Thankfully Fambly Cat proves to be a fitting epitaph for the band, an adrenaline rush that makes you lament the fact that the band are already doomed. The album does what the earlier Grandaddy releases done with ease, a combination of cracking little rocky pop numbers with some sad, beautiful songs that really complimented Jason Lyttle's voice, all the time retaining a sense of humour and playfulness, something that Sumday sadly missed.

Of the rock numbers Disconnecty and Geez Louise are great pop and Rear View Mirror demonstrates more verve than at any other point in the band's career and is a candidate for their best song. Where I'm Anymore and This is How it Always Starts are heart breaking. The album does make a couple of mis-steps, the opener and 50% being particularly poor, and the curse of Sumday rears its ugly head again in the shape that the album is a little too bloated. It could have done with a little trimming but its easy to see why the band would want to include as much as possible.

So it isn't perfect, but then that's kind of the point when it comes to Grandaddy, so top marks for a fitting last album. They'll be sorely missed.

Glass half full
I just love Grandaddy's sweeping, circling anthems. I'd happily let the best loop away for hours on end. Eight on Sophtware made it onto my iPod, and five from this collection. So there's your answer. Fambly Cat is five-eighths as good as Sophtware.

Just listening to 2000 Man again. Boy, does this remind me of Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime.