Watch out…
The career of indie-rock band Grandaddy was based on an extended narrative of lower-middle-class life in Modesto, California. When singer/songwriter Jason Lytle finally escaped to Montana last year, that narrative dissolved, along with the band.
But it didn’t take long for Lytle to recover: a barebones jasonlytle.com has materialized, along with a Myspace page, both of which promise a solo album in 2008. Hmm, that would be this year, wouldn’t it? That’s a shorter downtime than typically happened between Grandaddy albums. So much for the hiatus.
(and Grandaddy is still making money posthumously, having just offered up “A.M. 180,” from Under the Western Freeway, for a Dodge Journey commercial)
There’s not much to see on these sites other than some demos from Just Like the Fambly Cat. But while Grandaddy’s Myspace describes their sound as similar to “when Todd Rundgren got into that soft car crash with Dolly Parton,” Lytle’s Myspace describes his solo sound as similar to “a broken dishwasher.” Maybe that’s a clue into how things have changed.