[4/5] Grandaddy's music has always sounded like pop filtered through a daydream: Nothing is quite as it seems; everything feels just a little askew. Sadly, it's finally time to wake up, as frontman/braintrust Jason Lytle has announced that Grandaddy's fifth album, Just Like The Fambly Cat, is also the band's last. Given that the split is amicable (and considering that since 2000's concept album, The Sophtware Slump, people have probed for themes in Grandaddy's music), it seems Lytle & Co. are directing any farewell barbs not at themselves, but at their hometown of Modesto, California. A reported examination of the "thoughtlessness and mindlessness of sprawl," Cat finds the band still evoking the Flaming Lips and Neil Young during a journey filled with dashed hopes and the desire to get away. The album hits its downtrodden peak with "Summer...It's Gone" and "Guide Down Denied," while the haunting finale, "Shangri-La (Outro)," finds Lytle repeating, "I'll never return." What, you expected a happy ending?
(V2) JR Griffin
 Official Website: http://www.v2records.com
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