Picking up where their Signal to Snow Ratio EP left off, Grandaddy's wittily named second album The Sophtware Slump upgrades the group's wry, country-tinged rock with electronic flourishes that run through the album like fiber-optic lines. Arpeggiated keyboards sparkle on "Hewlett's Daughter" and "The Crystal Lake," and wind, birds, and transmissions hover around the songs' peripheries, suggesting a Silicone Valley landscape. Jason Lytle's frail, poignant vocals provide a bittersweet counterpoint to the chugging guitars and shiny electronics that envelop him like a cockpit or a cubicle on "Chartsengrafs" and "Broken Household Appliance National Forest" and set the tone for melancholy ballads like "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot," "Miner at the Dial-a-View," and "Jed the Humanoid," the story of a forgotten, alcoholic android. Lost pilots, robots, miners, and programmers try to find their way on The Sophtware Slump, an album that shares a spacy sadness with Sparklehorse's Good Morning Spider and Radiohead's OK Computer. Though it's a little more self-conscious and not quite as accomplished as either of those albums, it is Grandaddy's most impressive work yet and one of 2000's first worthwhile releases.

Opaque Evergreen Vinyl

1 He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot 8:52
2 Hewlett's Daughter 3:06
3 Jed the Humanoid 4:18
4 The Crystal Lake 5:00
5 Chartsengrafs 2:51
6 Underneath the Weeping Willow 2:40
7 Broken Household Appliance National Forest 4:34
8 Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) 3:25
9 E. Knievel Interlude (The Perils of Keeping It Real) 1:57
10 Miner at the Dial-a-View 5:21
11 So You'll Aim Toward the Sky 4:43