The GratesSecret Rituals
Dew Process

In 2005 a radio colleague cornered me in the music library and shoved a CD in my hands, “oh my god, you have to hear these guys.” It was ‘The Ouch. The Touch.’, the fourth EP from Brisbane indie pop three-piece, The Grates. It was at a time when I had just discovered the brilliance of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and was obsessed with their album, Fever To Tell. He was spot on – I loved this sort of thing: raw, bassless, energetic indie rock. It was wrong for this EP to be anything other than a burnt CD marked ‘DEMO’. The Grates have come a long way since then. With the help of producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine, Gomez), their 2006 debut album, ‘Gravity Won’t Get You High’, encompassed a more refined, catchy, exuberant sound in a fittingly produced package. My colleague hated it – “it’s sewwwww over-produced.” With that, he pushed it aside, while I fell in love. And although people like Pitchfork rated it something like 4 out of 10, The Grates’s ‘Gravity Won’t Get You High’ stands as one of my favourite albums of 2006 (though there were a lot… that was an incredible year of indie music).

‘Teeth Lost, Hearts Won’ came mid-2008. It was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, but as I wrote on my blog at the end of that year, it was the most disappointing. I’ve got to say, that’s where they lost me. They took on Peter Katis (Interpol, The National) and ended up with something that had a massive sound – they had outgrown themselves. I’m sorry, but when a band loses their edge to favouring production values, particularly one as exciting as The Grates had, I cry. There was no ‘Trampoline’, no ‘Science Is Golden’, and no ‘Inside Outside’. The unforgettable melodies for which I became a fan were no longer present.

The same is the case with ‘Secret Rituals’, out now on Dew Process, to whom they’ve surprisingly remained loyal. An album that took them to Brooklyn in search of inspiration, the first thing I noticed as I began listening to The Grates’s third LP is just how dull the drum tracks are. In January this year, Alana left Patience and John to pursue a career in baking, of all things, and it shows. No longer are the tracks written with drums in mind, which is a major change in direction for the band. Replacing them is layer upon layer of John and his guitars, and the introduction of… bass – it’s in every single track. This is no longer The Grates I once knew. There’s also much more of a sonic narrative from Patience, it feels like she’s actually writing about something, rather than repeating two or three words over and over. This might be a good thing for most, but memorising the lyrics to something like ’19 20 20’ wasn’t very difficult. Production values are incredibly high, something to be expected from John O’Mahoney (Coldplay, Metric, Living End), but is it okay for me to say they’re too high? This is definitely something different, it’s probably inevitable, though – more of the same usually provokes a backlash. It’s a strong, mature – sometimes repetitive – typical Brooklyn indie pop release.

I’m probably just a disgruntled old elitist who doesn’t like it when his favourite bands become popular and start to grow up, but I really don’t like this album. I wish The Grates would come back.

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