Gram Rabbit
Cultivation
Stinky
One of the worst problems with modern rock radio’s inability to let go of the early-to-mid ’90s insurgence of commercial alternative music is that listeners aren’t allowed any distance from that era’s genres. Given time, most any music style will go through the phases of being lame, of being moderately cool, then hip again. Without this time apart, however, and with grunge and all its inbred fifth-generation offspring still taking up space on the airwaves, a band like Gram Rabbit both perpetuates the problem and stands a decent chance of making it big.
It varies from track to track, but if you were to hit a random selection from this CD, chances are you’d be treated to a rehashing of Veruca Salt’s bubble-gum bluster, Garbage’s femme sexual predation or some other obnoxious blip on the radar. We should be over melodramatic angst aggression like “Paper Heart,” but it’s still rearing its ugly head ten years after the demise of Babes in Toyland. If there was any way to vault this album and release it only after we’ve been given a respite of five years, it would make the experience more palatable. If radio rock is absolutely your thing, you might dig Cultivation, just realize you have better access to far superior seeds out there.
Stinky Records: http://www.stinkyrecords.com
