Shakey Graves - Can't Wake Up

The smooth rock aesthetic has been inculcated back into American music in recent times. Shakey Graves garners it quite well, with all the nuanced instrumentation and fussy production arrangements commensurate with the style. Shakey Graves (Alejandro Rose-Garcia) swept up an award for Best Emerging Artist at the Americana Music Awards, which is not a ceremony I’m familiar with, but I’d imagine that NPR, Paste Magazine and other stalwarts of the more cultivated end of the homegrown indie-folk spectrum would be all over it.  

I don’t really know what to say about this album, apart from it bores me senseless. After 15 minutes of music, the sensorial equivalent of a too-light massage you never asked for, I was reaching for the bar fridge, and I can tell you, the Six String Brewing Company’s Black Oatmeal Stout is a good drop. The album didn’t sound much better though. Like Sufjan Stevens, just a tad insipid. My neighbour dropped over and disdainfully remarked “is this the stuff you’re listening to now?” and you know, in a literal sense, I had no response. I did however have another oatmeal stout, and it was even better than the first. This made ‘Big Bad Wolf’ sound pretty good, the off-kilter string work sounds pretty cool if you’re into faux mini-symphonies smothering your indie like a butchered dessert.

So, after my second oatmeal stout, my 12 year old daughter, who is an excellent judge of rock music pretension, and will shoot down in flames anything I regard as cutting edge, volunteered “what’s this Dad, this is alright’. I asked her to elaborate and she said “I don’t know, it’s kind of pretty and it isn’t loud”. Also, she reckons the harp on ‘Foot on the Bed’ is agreeable, and she's right. Very baroque. Blues, Folk and Rock ‘n’ Roll apparently.