FFWD Weekly
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Music by Mike Bell Grade with guests Wednesday, July 5 The Warehouse Usually when someone’s making noise you don’t look for nuances in what they’re saying – because there normally aren’t any. That’s what makes American rock act Grade so alluring. Buried under a granite rock onslaught of blistering, though usually melodic, discordance are poetics that belie the barbarism of the delivery – and those graceful lyrical observations on the human heart are yours to explore if you’re willing to excavate. "I find that if you make the music intense then you have to write the lyrics just as well," explains vocalist-lyricist Kyle Bishop. "I find that it’s an artform." That care in his craft is evident on the band’s latest release, Under the Radar. Sounding like a heavier Superchunk with a Dylan Thomas complex, the quintet explore Bishop’s love life with complexity and candour. And what those lyrics say about the songwriter is as surprising as it is revealing. Take, for example, the lines from "For the Memory of Love": "The last time I saw her, I stood tall and played the role/ The great architects’ post and lintel have fallen/ It ended in Chicago on the phone, and it took two years for my contempt to turn to compassion." Wow. If Greg Dulli from The Afghan Whigs is Mr. Superlove, consider Bishop Mr. Supersensitivity. "Too sensitive at times, actually," he laughs. "I’m definitely romantic. It’s a killer.... I’m not that true rock ’n’ roll personality. I’m outspoken and stuff, but I don’t really like that women and drinking and drugs type thing – that’s not my thing. I’m kind of a one-woman man, and that’s it." Actually, in the case of Under the Radar, make that a two-woman man. While previous albums from their six-year career have explored more cerebral questions, or what Bishop calls "fantastic ideas," most of the 11 tracks on the new disc are centred around a duo from the pages of Bishop’s Loves Lost. "One which was an old long-time relationship which was just annihilated and the girl became my friend a couple years after we broke up. Some of the songs are about her because she started being even more messed up when we became friends. So the songs are also exploring her issues. "The second girl was kind of just a," Bishop pauses, "a big, big mistake." Let’s hope there’s more of those in the very near future.

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