Cooking Vinyl, home of artist such as The Prodigy, The Cult, The Proclaimers, The Enemy, The Cranberries, Asian Dub Foundation, Art Brut, Pop Will Eat Itself, more recently Marilyn Manson – among many others – on April 9th, 2012 released the second album by Grand Duchy. The band was formed in 2008 by Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV aka Black Francis aka Frank Black famous for being the primary songwriter and singer of Pixies, and his wife Violet Clark. Their debut effort, “Petits Fours”, was released in February 2009, the duo now seems even more creative and “Let the People Speak” sounds twice as good as their previous album.
Although this is an experiment, a journey to quite different moods and vibes and without being tightly tied or related to any particular musical genre.
The label, the box of “Alternative Rock” seems the more appropriate, but Frank Black and Violet Clark are surfing far beyond the borders of conventional Rock and merging sometimes quite unortodoxly different sounds and styles into their own. The “shade”, the subtle taste of Pixies is present, but without that Punk edge, the vibe is mainly dark, eventually closely related to the vibe and spirit of The Cure. As probably Pixies had influenced primarily The Cure, as Frank’s music left his fingerprints all over on the work of many other artist from David Bowie, Radiohead, PJ Harvey to Nirvana and U2.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwefM1_n0oI&w=545&h=307]
Tracklist:
01 – The Lopsided World of L
02 – See-Thru You
03 – White Out
04 – Where is John Frum
05 – Geode
06 – Shady
07 – Annie Bliss
08 – Dark Sparkles and the Beat
09 – Two Lies and One Truth
10 – Silver Boys
11 – Illiterate Lovers
12 – Face
13 – Esther
14 – Rotc
15 – Let the People Speak
This is definitively not a prefabricated, mainstream standard, tasteless product. This is music – pour les connaisseurs. Love this mixture of 80’s New Wave with Future Pop and Indie Rock elements, never know what’s coming up next, where the music will gonna take you, but it’s so good tripping around without direction and commitments!
Grand Duchy @ Cooking Vinyl
Grand Duchy @ MySpace
Grand Duchy @ Twitter
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa8jOSYiJeg&w=545&h=307]
