Need to Hear Recent Release

The Grates

Sometimes songs come along and actually make you pause, wonder to yourself, "Why haven't I heard this before!?", and cause you to scramble to write down the name of the band so you can look into the music afterwards. Then you're caught between trying to act like you are one of the first ones to hear this music and feeing like you should have known about the band before they released the sounds entering your brain. The Grates have made me do all of this, and I'm not ashamed to admit it because they need to have more fans enjoying their mix of post punk and indie rock greatness.

Hailing from "the land down under", The Grates received much praise from American music landmarks, Rolling Stone and Spin (amongst others), for their debut full length album, Gravity Won't Get You High, released in 2006. Songs like "Silence is Golden" portray the sound they were going for during that period, a clap-happy, indie power pop taste of female lead singer-music. The fun and excitement in their music is evident through the videos for the songs on that album. Even "19-20-20" is evidence of their head-bobbing, silly performance style. Despite this previous focus the band had, they returned to Brisbane, AU only to realize the hype had passed and they now were forced to write again. Bandmates Patience Hodgson, lead singer, John Patterson, guitarist, and Alana Skyring, drummer, found their renewed direction. Here's how it went down: New songs ‘Two Kinds of Right’ and ‘Milk Eyes’ became "the new yardsticks, and suggested a major evolution. 'We wrote a bunch of songs that week,' John says. 'And right there was the direction of the new album.' Patience interjects sweetly: 'We blew our creative load during that period.'”(thegrates.com/bio)

You can also hear this new direction on "Burn Bridges", the first single off The Grates new album, Teeth Lost, Hearts Won. What makes this new batch of songs stand apart from The Grates previous releases is the post punky edge Patience sings with and the rhythm energy John and Alana possess when performing the tunes. Patience still wants to have fun with the performances, which is one of the reasons why they garner great admiration from their fans, but now she can be rightfully be compared to Karen O, of Yeah Yeah Yeahs fame, instead of the lady who used to handpuppet Lambchop.

Their recent release came out August 2nd in Austrailia and last week, August 5th, in the states. Currently, it is backstocked as an import buy on Amazon, which has to mean something if you "buy" your music, which you should be doing! (I'm not gonna rant about illegal downloading, but you should support your artists!) Either way, get The Grates Teeth Lost, Hearts Won when you can and bounce dance to the new sound of the new music. Feel free to investigate for yourselves on their MySpace and official website here.