Let's Eat Grandma - Two Ribbons
Let’s Eat Grandma
Two Ribbons
By: Jon Gallagher
Two Ribbons is a record suffering from a curious form of dissociative identity disorder.
Two Ribbons, the third release from the U.K.'s Let's Eat Grandma, is a journey. Not like a "Lord of the Rings-esque epic journey," but more of a "Mom tells you that you're going to the toy store, but you end up at the dentist" kind.
The album kicks off with "Happy New Year," a hearty dose of glitzy, euro-synthpop as an instrumental backdrop for the plaintive, minimally inflected vocals of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth.
In the time-honored tradition of musicians since time immemorial, lyrics grappling with weighty subjects (such as the death of a bandmate's boyfriend and the evolving nature of the duo's friendship) lie within these cheerful percolating beats. Even then, the lyrical content seems strangely shallow for the significant subject matter being tackled.
This superficiality is not helped by the narrow breadth of emotionality within the vocal performances. In the song "Levitation," there is a reference to (the singer) having a "Catastrophic Saturday," - but the delivery feels more like the catastrophic sound of, "The barista forgot the extra vanilla shot in my Macchiato and spelled my name wrong on the cup."
The first half of the record sounds too happy and well adjusted for its own good. Imagine giving the equine cast of "My Little Pony" six Red Bulls each and teaching them to program Ableton or FL Studio. It's like Black Dresses, but properly medicated and with three or four years of good therapy under their belts level of trauma acceptance on "Insect Loop."
The first five songs go down painlessly. It's easy to imagine any one of them on the soundtrack to the motion picture adaptation of some beloved YA novel and the lyrics etched in ballpoint on the binder of seventh-grade girls everywhere because "Goddammit Mom, you just don't understand! Janey was my best friend and Bree invited her to a sleepover and didn't invite me, and Janey went! My life is OVER!"
The only special moment is a wonderfully executed guitar solo in "Watching You Go" that served as an oasis of humanity and proves a portent of things to come.
"Half-Light" is a nifty little instrumental track, clocking in at a respectable 0:31, ushering in the second half of this release.
The material starts to have an emotional and textural grit sorely lacking in the first half in the remaining tracks. The pensive down-tempo instrumentation lends itself better to the paeans to love and loss comprising the final songs on the release.
Musically, these tracks veer away from shiny euro-disco into the logical extension of where the band was heading with their 2018 album I'm All Ears. Rewardingly, these second-half songs have the friction of artistic expression that was downplayed until this point on the album.
"Sunday" swings with a sorrowful wistfulness, while the instrumental "In the Cemetery," with its birdsong intro, sounds like the soundtrack to a movie that exists solely within the listener's mind.
In the name of saving the best for last, Let's Eat Grandma give us "Strange Conversations," which starts as a Folk ballad, unfolding like some origami trick into a breathtaking musical arrangement, with a heartbreakingly mournful vocal delivery that snags the soul.
Capping off the album is the title track, "Two Ribbons." It's a bittersweet tribute to that part of life where we stop having a "Best Friend" and turn instead to a wider circle of associates and contemporaries, divesting our attentions away from the intensity of the one to the general acceptance of the many.
The beautiful emotion conveyed in this track aligns perfectly with the feelings of loss and change inherent in the gentle trauma of growing up.
Two Ribbons is a record suffering from a curious form of dissociative identity disorder. The first half spends its time telling you that nothing is wrong, while it dances with tears in its eyes, while the latter half is that heart-to-heart talk you have with your closest friend at 2:30 a.m., all brutal honesty, and tequila.
Fortunately, the duo of Walton and Hollingworth pull all the stops out in the second half, making the emotional sterility of the previous tracks well worth the payoff.
After all, Mom would buy you Mcdonald’s for lunch even after a dentist appointment.
