Gram Rabbit - RadioAngel & the RobotBeat

Filed under: Eric Saeger, Music Reviews   

Eric Saeger

At first listen, Gram Rabbit’s new LP sounds veritably commercial in comparison to their last two albums, which bet their futures on weird psychedelic quasi-electro. In particular, their 2006 Cultivation album was strangely captivating – no, I’ll just say it, great – on the strength of Jessika von Rabbit’s sexy but unattainable teasing, that is up until the point that Todd Rutherford’s semi-Spacemen 3 vocals mussed up the hair of “Angel Song.” It’s there that one’s skip-button finger got itchy, and the next couple of tunes inspired a lot of ejection-button hits.

With this self-indulgence having gone by the books over a 3-album span, the band has earned a respite from smashing their heads against the wall, and they’ve spent their elite-underground-artiste capital (Scarlett Johansson says GR is her favorite band, but then she sort of says that about everybody) doing an entire album’s worth of crunch-guitar-ridden post-acid-house and Fatboy Slim-inspired big beat, Jessika’s bee-stung pout pimped front and center. Only obstacle to these guys’ taking over the world is their budget, which isn’t the size of Chemical Brothers’, and their depth, which is a bit advanced for average listeners – it requires an entire two listens to get you hooked.

Posted on March 4th, 2008.

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