Philip K. Dick famously pondered, “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” The songs of Grandaddy’s 2003 classic Sumday ask a related question: do they get hella bummed too? Long before the rise of AI, songwriter Jason Lytle’s third album with Grandaddy personified technology, picking up where 2000’s Y2K saga The Sophtware Slump left off. Adding Alan Parsons Project-eque prog orchestrations to chunky, distorted power pop guitars, his winsome, Neil Young-recalling voice poignantly lamented the drags of modern existence.
To celebrate the album’s 20th anniversary, Dangerbird has announced Sumday Twunny, a 4xLP box due September 1st. The new edition includes remastered audio, rarities, and B-sides, and best of all, Sumday: The Cassette Demos, early lo-fi versions of each song on the album. “After many years of hammering away at writing and recording as Grandaddy, Sumday seems to be the center of it and where it all peaked,” Lytle says in a press release. “Revisiting this material and reflecting on those times has been a double edged sword. Bittersweet is an apt word, I suppose. Twenty years after the fact, I’m just grateful to be alive and kicking… “
Scrappy and worn, the cassette demos present a “raw… sort of sketchbook/rough draft of the LP,” Lytle says. The demos are streaming now; we’ll keep our fingers crossed for a standalone cassette edition down the line.
