Based in songwriter Jason Lytle's home town of Modesto, California, USA, Grandaddy's lo-fi slacker rock insidiously worked its way into the heart of the alternative music press during the late 90s. Lytle was a former skateboarder whose employment record boasted a spell in a hazardous waste treatment plant. Around 1992, he formed Grandaddy with Kevin Garcia (bass) and Aaron Burtch (drums). The band spent several uneventful years putting together demo tapes recorded in Lytle's home studio, and playing bars and coffee shops in Modesto. Jim Fairchild (guitar) and Tim Dryden (keyboards) swelled the band's ranks for 1995's seven-track cassette debut, A Pretty Mess By This One Band. A haphazard mix of lo-fi and college rock, the band only managed to rise above the sum of their influences on the standout track "Taster'. The record attracted enough attention, however, for the band to be able to record a full-length album. 1997"s Under The Western Freeway was another home-produced recording. Fleshing out their lo-fi production with some odd sound effects, songs such as the single "Summer Here Kids" and "A.M. 180" built around simple but winning melodies, at odds with Lytle's relentlessly downbeat lyrics.
V2 Records reissued Grandaddy's debut album in 1998. Their first major label recording The Sophtware Slump benefited from the increased production budget available to the band, and was roundly hailed in the press as one of 2000's finest rock releases. Lyrics about alcoholic androids, lost pilots and miners, and the impersonal nature of the high-tech world, prompted flattering comparisons to Radiohead's late 90s masterpiece OK Computer. The follow-up Sumday pursued the same themes but was an oddly flat-sounding collection, lacking the musical urgency of its predecessor and paling in comparison to contemporary work by the similarly styled Flaming Lips. A mini-album was released in 2005, but at the start of the following year Lytle announced that the band was splitting up. Their swan song Just Like The Fambly Cat was a credible effort but still did not come near to the superlative The Sophtware Slump.
