Last month, indie veterans Grandaddy reissued their 2000 sophomore album The Sophtware Slump, this time as a box set. But it didn’t take long for vocalist Jason Lytle to share even more music. The singer hand-picked two songs that hold personal meaning and reimagined them with pensive covers.
Lytle released covers of Belle & Sebastian’s “The Fox In The Snow” as well as Beach Boys’ “In My Room” to his Bandcamp, then explained his decision to cover them:
“‘The Fox In The Snow’- I’ve loved this Belle & Sebastian song for ages. I had to slow it down and tame the ‘bounce’ that it had though. I wanted it sweeter and sadder. That’s how I hear it: sweet and sad.
‘In My Room’ – For anyone who claims introversion as a primary characteristic and has found themselves in some sort of career that requires communicating in public, this Beach Boys song is yours. Also, scarily fitting for just being anyone out there in the year 2020.”
Earlier, Lytle chatted with Uproxx about the The Sophtware Slump reissue. Speaking about the original album’s inspiration, Lytle praised other well-known bands of the early aughts. “I wanted to make it the most interesting, imaginative sounding record that I could,” he said. “There was a lot of exciting shit going on at the time, too. The Flaming Lips were making these really amazing, cool, weird-ass, imaginative sounding records. Radiohead’s OK Computer blew my f*cking mind. I was just feeding off of all that stuff.”
Listen to Lytle cover Belle & Sebastian’s “Fox In The Snow” and Beach Boys’ “In My Room” above.