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Nov 19, 2018 By Christopher Roberts Grandaddy

Grandaddy have shared a brand new song, “Bison on the Plains.” It’s the band’s first new music since their 2017 comeback album, Last Place, which was their first album in 11 years, since 2006’s Just Like the Fambly Cat. “Bison on the Plains” is out now via 30th Century Records, a label run by Danger Mouse. Listen below.

Grandaddy’s main creative force Jason Lytle had this to say about the song in a press release:

“Setting out with the intent of replicating the ‘feel and vibe’ of the song ‘Drive’ which is one of my favorite Cars songs. I got a little of the way into ‘Bison on the Plains’ (BOTP) and realized I had failed. I blamed the lame new spot I had set up my studio in Portland Oregon. In the basement of some super pretentious magazine lured by cheap rent…I just really was not feeling it.

I stopped working on BOTP and cursed my new studio location and immediately began disassembling everything…eventually moving out and setting up all my gear in the living room of my little house in Portland. A recent divorce and a purging of all domestic belongings/furniture made setting up all of my gear easy and convenient. This location also ended up being where I wrote and recorded most of Last Place, the most recent Grandaddy album.

Anyways…I thought BOTP might make the cut for Last Place but it did not. Apparently it still had some baggage carried over from whence it came. I loved the words though…and didn’t want to give up on it…so it simply got shelved in some incomplete form until I could come back and spend some more thoughtful time with it. So here it is.

It sounds as if the words are about the melodramatic lengths I go to…and methods I employ…to frame an image in a song. Almost jokingly. But respectfully.

Like all of the noises, sound samples, buttons, keys, circuits, wires, strings, and gear it takes for someone like me to facilitate the lonely looking image of a solitary bison standing out on the open plains.

I have no regrets of being a songwriter that cannot simply just pull this off with an acoustic guitar and some lyrics. I need my ‘tricks of the trade.’

Anyway… I’m just relieved I got the song out of that dank basement and out into the light.

Enjoy, J”

Read our 2017 interview with Grandaddy about Last Place.

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