David Grubbs
Rickets & Scurvy

If names like Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr Del Sol mean something to you, start reading this review from the next paragraph; if instead, they sound like tongue twisters or midfielders from Poland in 1978-‘80, you can continue reading these lines right away. Those names correspond to some of the most innovative entities of American experimental rock in recent decades and, as a common denominator, have the figure of David Grubbs.
David Grubbs is a guitarist, pianist, and composer, as well as one of the key figures in the current American minimalist singer-songwriter scene. He has collaborated for years with Jim O’Rourke, Tony Conrad, Thurston Moore, Matmos, Sonic Youth, and John McEntire.

The Gastr Del Sol released one of the most important works for the growth of new American music in the '90s, titled "Upgrade and Afterlife," and alternated brilliant ideas with an introspective environmental avant-garde that has made it a reference icon in musical genres less known to the majority.

If I wanted to make most of you buy this record, it would suffice to set this review talking about the presence of John McEntire on drums (a guarantee that answers to the name Tortoise), Noel Akchoté (one of the greatest avant-garde guitarists with collaborations with David Sylvian, Luc Ferrari, etc.) and, as if that weren’t enough, include the Matmos to enrich the sound of our composer from Louisville. Some of you would already be in the shop ordering the CD, right?
However, it is one of the least successful episodes in the copious discography of David Grubbs, less inspired than usual and sometimes (I'm sorry to say) poor in ideas, struggling to cover the 35 minutes of the album's duration.

Let's start right from the end, where Matmos compose two electronic instrumentals that really seem to have nothing to do with the rest, tracks that are an additional limitation to an album that is, in itself, not brilliant in songwriting.
The presence of Rick Moody by his side, which will also happen for "A Guess At The Riddle," imparts a greater folk tranquility to the album, seen in its opener "Transom" as a mediating track between experimentalism and singer-songwriter style.
I find much more interesting "The Nearer By and By" with slightly oriental moods, but above all, a storyteller-shaped Grubbs in "A Dream To Help Me Sleep," enriched by the piano and the dissonant "Pinned To The Spot" that returns to experiment with more complex atmospheres.

This album brings us the usual influences of David Grubbs suspended between folk and avant-garde, but it never manages to pinpoint the direction to pursue. This is a dangerous flaw for a talent like Grubbs because he began to show the same manifestations of weakness when the Gastr Del Sol project was already saturated with ideas.
However, it is an album that, you may not believe it after what I've written, I cherish dearly, because I like the clean artwork that conveys elegance, but above all, I keep it at home like those small objects or vinyls with some defect or malformation that make you love them unconsciously more.

1. Transom
2. Don't think
3. A Dream to Help Me Sleep
4. The Nearer By and By
5. I Did No Such Roaming
6. Pinned To The Spot
7. Aloft
8. Precipice
9. Crevassy
10. Kentucky Karaoke

Release date: 2002

Record label: Drag City