Album Review

Grammatics – Grammatics

• 13th Apr 2009

Grammatics hail from Yorkshire and are signed to ‘Dance to the Radio’. This is their debut album following a flurry of EP activity over the last 2 years.

Grammatics musical is very grandiose and is a huge step away from all the post arctic monkeys guitar spawning coat tail hangers on from the last year or so. Their style is bold and you have to admire Owen Brinley and Dominic Ord passion to become self sufficient and ground-breaking in what they are trying to achieve.

Tracks such as ‘The Vague Archive’ are more a throw back towards Suede’s ‘dog man star’ as it’s all strings, fragile vocals and threadbare guitar. These boys don’t do aggressive relentless guitar breaks with power solos – oh no they are ensuring they buck the trend and are very much ploughing their own furrow. It is a breath of fresh air what they are trying to do here.

However it doesn’t always work and this is somewhat shown up in the pompous ‘broken wing’ which is simply painful to endure in places. At times Brinley’s vocals seem rather spartan and rigid in his delivery and he shows his somewhat aggressive streak in ‘relentless fours’. This is the closest we get to barking vitriol and a slice of the band’s previous hardcore days under their Colour of Fire moniker. ‘Inkjet Lakes’ is a not so disimilar track to some of the earlier offerings and for me this is the big negative as it’s really difficult to see the wood from the trees in their musical style. They have been bold in their approach, but does it really work? Mmmmmmmm.