Windows – Greye (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Greye are that perfect example that music is normally either too simple or too layered to be called anything other than rock and roll…as opposed to rock ‘n’roll and all that crepe-sole music! Straight down the line guitar music generally needs nothing more than such a simple label but in the case of Greye it is the dexterity of their layering, the deftness of the musical textures that they work with that means unless you have the time to pick things apart you might as well stick with the easy and general term suggested.

Hang on! I do have the time, hold my copy of “Complicated Music Labels For Simple People” by Lester Bangs…I’m going in.

Greye drive on a country-rock sound, but as their self-imposed moniker “progressive-indie” suggests there is a lot more than that going on here than. Pop the hood and you find bass lines which float rather than just connect the root notes, guitars with a southern funk but the ability to fire off salvos of spiralling blues leads and a vocal which matches the infectiousness of pop with the earnestness of indie. Progressive, maybe, but only in the sense that it takes normally tightly compacted genres and pushes their boundaries, adds intricate details and forms wonderful sonic patterns as they plait them all together. So progressive, but not in the old school sense of the word. No wizard costumes were employed and Middle Earth wasn’t mentioned once. Thankfully.

So what do we have then? Soulful-exploratory-indie-pop-rock with a country vibe and a commercial future. Shall we just label it rock and roll for now? But damned original rock and roll at that.