4. Grandaddy—Sumday (2003)
I'm OK with my decay.
I have no choice.
I have no voice.
I have no say on my decay.
I have no choice
so I'll rejoice.
—"OK with My Decay" Grandaddy
In some other house, in some other part of the world, a young couple lies in bed staring into each other's eyes. They've only been married for five years, and have no children thankfully, but when they look at each other they still feel the same fire they felt when they first met. Outside, the sky is dark and red and angry, the earth-rending percussion of impact shaking everything. Pictures fall from their walls, the house creaks, but the two of them press their foreheads together and gaze into out-of-focus eyes, trying with every ounce of mental strength to conjure memories to escape into: a sunny drive up the coast, laughter, goofy pictures, camping on the beach.
This kind of feeling—this warmth in the face of destruction—is what
Sumday is all about. I actually had a very hard time deciding between this album and Grandaddy's album
The Sophtware Slump for this list, but in the end I decided that the latter was just a little too dark, a little too pessimistic for what I was going for.
Sumday is the perfect combination of beauty and the knowledge that all beautiful things come to an end. The arrangements are lush, the melodies sunny. The songwriting is compact and gorgeous but suffused with substantial clouds of modern world angst, just like good pop music should be. The lyrics are cynical yet whimsical, silly yet heartfelt, with a sensibility that can best be compared to Kurt Vonnegut finding humor in the face of tragedy.
This album, like the best pop albums, has its upbeat tracks and its downbeat tracks, but there is a definite trajectory here from upbeat to downbeat, from social commentary to introspection. What would be side one, if this were a vinyl or cassette release, blasts out of the gate with the cheery and energetic "Now It's on" but quickly reveals the album's pained beating heart with "I'm on Standby". "The Go in the Go for It" and "The Group Who Couldn't Say" retreat to mid-tempo breeziness, but bitter lyrics and a heartfelt piano interlude reveal this to be a feint. Conversely, "Lost on Yer Merry Way" and "El Caminos in the West" deceive with lighthearted titles but still cut like a recent breakup. Side two doesn't even pretend to hide it's sadness and existential angst, opening with the dual open wounds of "'Yeah' is What We Had" and "Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World". For a moment the band masquerades in a playful fashion with the album's catchiest song "Stray Dog and the Chocolate Shake"—though once again lyrics implying isolation and regret haunt the carefree tune—then they quickly descend into an emotional black hole of introspection. This probably sounds like a criticism, but I assure you it isn't. "OK with My Decay" and "The Warming Sun" are two of the most gut-wrenchingly stunning and emotionally raw pop songs of the past decade or two—and the latter is responsible for coining the wonderful word "overmisunderstood". After them, the world really does feel like it might be ending. "The Final Push Toward the Sum" finishes things nicely, broken but with a faint glimmer of hope, which is right about where our little story stands at this very moment.