Grandaddy
Signal To Snow Ratio EP

THE REVIEW

Oh sorry, I hadn't told you, but I'm in the car tonight and it's just started to rain, a real storm.
I park, and I hear the music pouring on the windshield, Protected From The Rain I would say, or rather, Jason Lytle says with his helium voice as I enjoy the last track.
I listen to it often, actually. Yes, okay, I admit it, I review this EP (released in 1999, a few months before the masterpiece concept "The Sophtware Slump") just for this song, the most beautiful by Grandaddy.

There would also be Hand Crank Transmitter, which starts with a crackling crescendo that is very 'broken gadget', and then resolves into one of their classic dreamy, soft, and dirty songs (like the snow); Jeddy 3's Poem, assorted electronic meows coming directly from the humanoid heart of Jed (the hero of Sophtware Slump); and Mgm Grand, a funny pop vignette.
But they slip away quickly like the drop of water that fell on my car's windshield.

Protected From The Rain, instead, rains on me even though I'm sheltered, and it seeps into the cracks of my eyes.
This song really seems to be made of rain.
It might be the fault of the keyboard (light and dense droplets) or perhaps the piano chords like flashes in the darkness.
It could be that its off-key intensity wets the landscape of an invisible, surreal city.
It might be that the typical dirty guitar is missing, but its splendid voice is indeed dirty (fogged up from the condensation?), and I can imagine him while, outside my car, drenched, he sings "...and that poem you left on my windshield / wrapped in plastic / to protect it from the rain".
...It might be that these words are enough to make it a poem, perhaps protected from the rain, but damn exposed to emotions - like us.