Grampall Jookabox is David Adamson”¦ he’s signed to Asthmatic Kitty”¦ damn, to be honest all the biographical info this time around is boring as shit, and whereas I would normally start with something like that, I seem to be skipping it this time around, maybe I need to find a new way to open reviews? Lets move on, yes? Check the next paragraph to find out what this album sounds like, and a little later in the final paragraph we’ll see how I feel about this album.Ropechain has a palette of bass, synth, little bits of guitar, multi tracked vocals and percussion blended into various shades, with reggae, industrial, hip hop, indie rock and even early 90s acid house represented. Every instrument used seems to be broken or intentionally messed with, Phil Elverum percussion distorts into black pillows on most songs, especially ‘The Girl Ain’t Preggers’, a clapped-out synth whirrs away in ‘Lets Go Mad Together’, sped-up processed vocals appear in ‘Ghosts’, thick hairy bass coils through ‘The One Thing’, you get the general idea. It all goes to serve the thrust of the album: a panic attack of heaving wheezes, a kaleidoscope of every day life, split into shards twisting away, the weight of time hanging above the protagonist. David Adamson spits out knowing declarations, but also paranoid ranting and delirious dream-ideas, shifting through a left field hip-hop weave of imagery (‘Black Girls’), to David Byrne ejaculations (‘Lets Go Mad Together’), to crooning (‘The Girl Ain’t Preggers’).Grampall Jookabox’s sound is refreshingly different, and not just because they are including some reggae, the broken aesthetic manages a remarkable feat in being able to sound at once both terribly minimal, and also room filling. Two or three instrumental elements might go into one track, yet the end result is like a window into a subterranean hall, (‘You Will Love My Boom’). This album, and maybe I’m being influenced by the front cover here, sounds earthy to me. The prominence of bass, the cabin-fever psychedelia, the ‘mushrooms’, the industrial quality to the electronics, there’s just something there I think. So that’s what it sounds like.It’s an interesting album certainly, but it feels underdeveloped in some ways, whether that’s the singular sound the band have made which is limiting or Adamson’s vocal styles which can become annoying, off-the-wall and tweaked, the rather heavy handed sentiment in ‘The Girl Ain’t Preggers’ comes across as immature and not particularly insightful”¦ I don’t know, it’s hard to pin-point, but there’s definitely something there. Or rather not there. I’m skirting dangerously close to saying something like ‘it doesn’t seem authentic to me’, which is a baseless criticism, because how can you now the intent of the artist, and etc. Maybe it’s just safe to say I don’t seem to gain anything noteworthy from the lyrics, and the sound of the album is interesting, but not that interesting. It feels like there is essentially nothing there but some disposable thing that is interesting now, but you know will never get played after the year is over. 60%Grampall Jookabox on MySpace