Somehwere along Route 11, Upstate New York 3:46 PM by JEFF FUSCO
TANGENTIALLY RELATED: Most bands have a shelf life of ten years tops — five in obscurity trying to get your attention, and another five trying desperately not to squander it. By then, the ultimatums of long-suffering significant others, accruing debt, mounting substance abuse issues and internecine in-the-van squabbling conspire to break the back 
of even the strongest rock steeds. Bands like Grandaddy are in a war of attrition with the Fame Machine, and invariably the Machine wins — not least of all because it does not have to contend with personal debt, screaming girlfriends and passive aggressive drummers that hog the van-porn and the shotgun seat. So be it.
Grandaddy served it’s purpose well, messengering home soft bulletins about the collateral damage incurred in the Tectonic shift of centuries: the prevailing po-faced melancholy of living in a disposable technocracy, where khaki cubicle drones dream of electric sheep under Ikea lights, and todays’ iPod is tomorrows space junk.To do so, they borrowed liberally: The Pixies’ angular rockism; Stereolab’s jangling Moog vistas; Neil Young’s shivery, high-lonesome yelp; ELO’s syncretic symphonic whoosh. And somehow they made it all fit like a snug North Face fleece. MORE