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Oct 25, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Dustin Aksland

Grandaddy have announced a new album, Blu Wav, and shared its first single, “Watercooler,” via a music video. Blu Wav is due out February 16, 2024 via Dangerbird. Aaron Beckum directed the “Watercooler” video. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover artwork.

Grandaddy’s frontman Jason Lytle had this to say about “Watercooler” in a press release: “Most of my relationships have involved girls who worked in office settings. This song is about the end of one, or perhaps a few, of those relationships. Listeners will also notice the pedal steel on this track and eventually on many others from the forthcoming new album. It’s a first for Grandaddy, and I couldn’t be more thrilled about this fact.”

The album’s title Blu Wav is a mash-up of “bluegrass” and “New Wave,” as the new album tries to combine the lyrics associated with bluegrass waltz’s with the synthesizers and electronic sounds of ’80s New Wave, with the latter being more in Grandaddy’s wheelhouse. This came about when Lytle discovered a classic country radio station while driving through the Nevada desert and heard Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz” and wondered what it sound like in more of a Grandaddy style. “There’s an inordinate amount of pedal steel [on the new album],” says Lytle.

In 2017 Grandaddy released their comeback album, Last Place, which was their first album in 11 years, since 2006’s Just Like the Fambly Cat. Blu Wav is their first new album since Last Place, but they’ve been busy with archival releases since then.

Earlier this year they released Sumday Twunny, a 20th anniversary box set reissue of their 2003 album, Sumday, which included Sumday: The Cassette Demos and Sumday: Excess Baggage, a 13-song collection of rarities and B-Sides that was also released separately.

In 2020, Grandaddy released a 20th anniversary reissue of The Sophtware Slump, which included a solo piano version of the album played by Lytle.

Grandaddy were on the cover of Under the Radar’s very first print issue, in 2001, in which we interviewed them about The Sophtware Slump.

Grandaddy also features Aaron Burtch, Jim Fairchild, and Tim Dryden. The band’s Kevin Garcia passed away in 2017.

Read our 2017 interview with Grandaddy about Last Place.

Grandaddy also contributed to our Covers of Covers 20th anniversary album, where they covered Metric’s “Blindness.”

We also interviewed Grandaddy for our 20th Anniversary Issue and you can read that article here.

Blu Wav Tracklist:

1. Blu Wav
2. Cabin in My Mind
3. Long as I’m Not the One
4. You’re Going to Be Fine and I’m Going to Hell
5. Watercooler
6. Let’s Put this Pinto on the Moon
7. On a Train or Bus
8. Jukebox App
9. Yeehaw Ai in the Year 2025
10. Ducky, Boris and Dart
11. East Yosemite
12. Nothin’ to Lose
13. Blu Wav Buh Bye

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