Grandaddy -- Just Like the Fambly Cat

Frontman Jason Lytle says this is Grandaddy's final album. He would know -- the quintet seemed more and more a one-man band over the years, with his longtime, California-bred buds sporadically convening in service to Lytle's fickle muse. And what a muse it's been. The lo-fi, Pavement-on-a-Neil-Young-bender of Under the Western Freeway (1997) gave way to The Sophtware Slump (1999), a shimmering, remarkably cohesive song cycle on our increasingly tech-dependent planet. Its glossier follow-up, Sumday (2003), takes Lytle's ELO fixation to new levels, resulting in an ear-pleasing but inconsistent set of songs. Now comes Just Like the Fambly Cat, a fitting swan song that pulls from each era of the band's evolution. Following an unnecessary but apparently symbolic opening sequence in which a kid mumbles something about the family cat (hence the album's title), "Jeez Louise" kicks things off in high-octane fashion: chugging guitars battle noisy keyboards and that ever-steady backbeat as Lytle sings about a teenage sexual rendezvous gone bad ("Shacked up at Modesto Inn/All the sudden your mom crashed in and she said: 'No, he is not the one for you' "). Elsewhere, the wistful "Rearview Mirror" and "Summer ... It's Gone" revel in what these guys do best: a languid, space-age mix of acoustic guitars and keyboard atmospherics, set off by Lytle's high, affecting whine and rueful lyrics ("Summer it's gone and I don't know/Where everyone went or where I'll go"). It's a sentiment that applies now more than ever. (Jason Gargano) Grade: B+

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