GRANDFATHER CHILD

Houston, TX-based group Grandfather Child present their self-titled debut release on New West Records. While their sound is shot through with many a wild rapture and mighty-flowing passages of hands-in-the-air elation, Grandfather Child is no hidebound roots-rock band. Theirs is a refreshingly contemporary, modern update on rock and roll's Pentecostal essence. On its journey from the source, their train has picked up swirling psychedelia, blues and bluesy metal, sumptuous neo-soul, snatches of twang, and modern Black gospel. Most of all, thanks to vocalist/steel guitarist Lucas Gorham, the band is suffused with sacred steel, the jubilant form of gospel spotlighted in the 2000s by Arhoolie Records and brought to the mainstream by Robert Randolph.??Backed by all-stars of the resurgent Houston music scene in multi-instrumentalists Ryan Chavez and Geoffrey Muller, Grandfather Child's expansive sound travels from the blues-y Bourbon Street-meets-the-British Black Country of the sludge metal, shrieking-steel dirge New Orleans to the rare lysergic air at the boogie mountaintop of ... Gonna Have Ourselves a Vision. Muller's hillbilly banjo mantra kicks off I Would Like to Thank the Universe/Planet Earth, and after traversing some clouds of Gorham's steel guitar joy, the song culminates in a prodigious Hendrixian apocalypse. The call-and-response rave-up Ride That Train is an express to Sacred Steel Valhalla; far better to buy a ticket and hop aboard and enjoy the ride than to try to stand in its way.??As adept as he is at wailing and shredding, Gorham is equally adept at stateliness and majesty in both his singing and playing. Grandfather Child is at its most lush on mid-tempo, Rhodes-adorned, string-laden babymakers like the swellingly anthemic Across Our Minds, the spring-shower of purple rain that is Can't Seem to Forget, the funky Philly-style strings-meet-harmonies of Magical Words, and the utterly lovely (and utterly well-sequenced) album closer It Shines On.??Grandfather Child Grandfather Child Track Listing:??1. Can't Seem To Forget?2. ... Gonna Have Ourselves A Vision?3. Magical Words?4. New Orleans?5. I Would Like To Thank The Universe / Planet Earth?6. Across Our Minds?7. Waiting For You?8. Ride That Train?9. It Shines On