On John Grant And Healing Yourself

[kaine123]

[QUOTE][IMG]http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/06/24/john-grant-2_wide-9cec6295fe25fd0f6e384130984ef14021255509-s40.jpg[/IMG]
[I]John Grant.[/I][/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]Offsetting unsettling lyrics about depression, self-hate, toxic relationships, religion-fueled ignorance and societal cruelty with utterly gorgeous melodies is one of the oldest tricks in the songwriter's handbook. But most excel at half of that combo while falling far short in the other. John Grant excels on both counts, plus he sings like an angel while displaying devilish wit. Imagine one of Paul Williams' soul-stirring classics for The Carpenters like "We've Only Just Begun" with additional lyrics by Kurt Cobain, and you've got the gist of Grant gems like "Where Dreams Go to Die."

It's a quality that ranks the 44-year-old musician formerly based in Denver and now living in Reykjavík the most masterful current singer-songwriter you've probably never heard. And it's why British rock magazine Mojo deemed his 2010 solo debut Queen of Denmark their favorite album of that year: Grant boasts chops akin to the introspective bards of the early 1970s without mimicking any one of them (except on "Chicken Bones," where he's paraphrasing Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" and subverting it with AM-radio-unfriendly lyrics). On this year's Pale Green Ghosts, he skirts the retro ghetto by partnering with Birgir Þórarinsson of Iceland's GusGus — the most accomplished veteran EDM act you've also probably never heard — for massively cinematic electronic/symphonic balladry that's as sonically refined as it is emotionally raw.

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[QUOTE][video=youtube;ekFWPsXXcg0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekFWPsXXcg0[/video][/QUOTE]

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Grant offers that kind of verity and rapture to an audience that's typically marketed empty glitz. In San Francisco, the second stop on his current tour, every under-exposed number in his two-hour set was met with a roaring response most singer-songwriters would be lucky to get for their biggest radio smash. The audience was mostly male, but the opening chords of "Where Dreams Go to Die" were met by a woman's voice at the back of the club roaring, "I LOVE THIS F—-ING SONG!!!"

Before "Glacier," he addressed the widespread, violent, government-sanctioned homophobia now sweeping through Russia, a country that once enchanted but now repulses the fluent Russian speaker and classically-trained pianist whose childhood specialty was the fervently Romantic concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff alluded to in the song's climactic flourish. For the oppressed, he sang hard-won words of hope in a caramel-sweet baritone heaving with passion, words that sum up his essence:

[QUOTE]"This pain, it is a glacier moving through you
And carving out deep valleys
And creating spectacular landscapes
And nourishing the ground
With precious minerals and other stuff.
So don't you become paralyzed with fear
When things seem particularly rough."[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

[url]http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/06/24/195265811/on-john-grant-and-healing-yourself?sc=fb&cc=fmp[/url]
[B]I recommend looking at the rest of the article, it's quite a good read.[/B]