Grand Nathaniel Releases An Engulfing Album
The new album release from Grand Nathaniel brings out a luscious and sort of robust approach, along with a beautifully cinematic underbelly throughout its course, and the aesthetic of all of this pulls you in and lets you get washed away with all that is happening.
The album is called Lonely Wanderer, and it starts with the track called "Blessed Creature", which automatically starts giving you a welcoming sort of warmth, but with this slight haunt and its undertone.
The guitar work is beautiful throughout this full album, and this single does a great job of sort of opening that door.
The track welcomes you into his world, and it is definitely a sonically expansive and rich set of tones and textures coming from guitars, live drumming, amazing bass lines, and the outstanding guitar work through and through.
From this first track alone, you start getting a little bit of a personal attribute. You can tell this came from some real place, and he's letting some inner thought out.
You get pulled into the melodies of the vocals, how they're performed, and the lyrics all at the same time.
The vocals have multiple layers, plenty of the time. This varies throughout the record, as do some of the intensities that come in waves, but it all comes from this particular place and the moods of the music set that tone perfectly for the lyrics of each track.
Again, he's showcasing some character and personality right from the first song.
Many would consider this to be a sort of indie rock project, which it is, but it also takes on indie-pop, dreamy tonalities, again these vast and spacious atmospheres, and the element of authenticity coming from those lyrics.
"And I Will" begins to show you more of his pop sensibility. This is a catchy track, although it still provides the same sort of atmosphere that the first song did.
Here, you can tell he's influenced by many different styles and genres, and that pop approach certainly shows face on this song.
Some tracks blend those two elements extremely well. Being able to take the pop sensibility, catchiness, hooks, and almost colorful tonalities, and blend them with the spacious and cinematic aesthetics is a brilliant feel all around.
Songs like "Pushin Through" provide exactly that.
You have a danceable rhythm, it's sort of bright, in a sense, but it also has an engulfing factor. There's something about it that still swallows you up, and a lot of this comes from some of the guitar work and how the tones of those instruments are set.
You have a great reverb effect on a lot of the guitars and sometimes the vocals as well. This adds that distance tone and vibe, giving it an almost dreamlike and spacious sound.
Of course, again, this is all underneath the brighter pop overcoat that the song gives off.
To me, I hear classic influences shining through a lot of the time. I can hear '80s pop influences, rock from the same decade, and it all gets shown differently throughout the record.
This is the kind of record you listen to all the way through. I wouldn't skip a song. I would listen to this thing from start to finish because then it is more of an experience.
Some of the songs, like the ones I mentioned, stand on their own two feet very well as singles, but listening to the full album gives you a big journey to take, and it is quite an infectious one.
A lot of these songs have elements like choruses, hooks, guitar lines, and more, that all sort of stick with you.
You really do feel like you're jumping into his world.
The album is nine songs and spans over 30 minutes, which gives you a lot to soak in, and it's quite a fun experience to do so.
You can easily tell that this is a project that is based on personal attributes and attention to the little details when it comes to recording music.
These are songs that were obviously visions at first, then later came to fruition. It makes me wonder how close the songs actually came to the original visions of them in the first place.
Either way, this was such a wonderfully woven record, and I would suggest checking this out again, all the way through.
Grand Nathaniel is a project that gives you more than what you may expect and never loses that pop tone, but also never loses the character involved.
But don't just take my word for it, check this record out.
See what this does for you because I'm sure you will have a great time swimming through the tones and textures of this release.
