Chris Grant

Album Title: 
It's Not About War
Release Date: 
Monday, October 21, 2013
Label: 
Distribution: 
Review Type: 

There is apparently a history of friendship between this Liverpool based artist, and 359Music's CEO & producer Alan McGee, which goes back to 2007, when Chris was fronting the band The Grants and played at McGee's West London night club Death Disco. According to McGee, they clicked on the basis of both being “a round peg in a square hole”, and if he'd had a label back then, the band would've been signed on the spot!

But that was not in the making back then yet, and eventually it would take this long for the two to collaborate with each other again. On that collaboration, McGee comments, “Chris could be one of the few artists in the history of Liverpool – after Echo And The Bunnymen and The La's – to step out of the shadows of The Beatles. Why? His songwriting is equal to that of Ocean Rain-era Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant, when the Bunnymen duo were writing unaffected, orchestrated, dark, paranoid and romantic songs. Echo And The Bunnymen and The La's created their own world and in every song from Chris, I hear Grant's world too...Chris' main preoccupation is writing big songs capturing northern innocence...it's a soulful escapism that eschews the hard man approach to songwriting. As with the best bands I've known, I get exited to hear his new songs and his musical progression. When Chris gets it right, his music transcends the apathy of Rock 'n' Roll over the past ten years.”!

High praise, eh? But let's be serious, this is guitar based Pop music (and nót Rock 'n' Roll!), with usually very little distortion effect on the guitar, but done with a very nice feeling for grace (and in fact occasionally the guitar is even acoustic), and occasional additions on “orchestrated”, or piano keyboards (“Like A 45” even has some horns being played). And, as far as a connection to Bunnymen, Chris' sensitive vocals are somewhat reminiscent of that. The “heaviest” song on the 10-track album is “Too Cool To Die”, and let this be one of the only two tracks which you'll find in full-length version on the Internet, namely at (http://) soundcloud.com/359music. But, as cool as that song is, it's not really representative for the album's material in general. Nah...in fact the also posted “Pretty Mean” rather IS...even if along with the aforementioned it constitutes the most “excited” part of the album. Oh, to allow you to listen to samples of all other songs, Chris has posted a link to the album's iTunes page at (www.) facebook.com/ChrisGrantOfficial!

If you're into Bunnymen's type of Pop, then by all means check out this dude! Personally, while I will not go ape-crazy on this kind if stuff, I sure can appreciate the songwriting skills. Nice songs which, in all their simplicity, occasionally get a somewhat more complex layer underneath. Yeah, I can appreciate this!

88/100