Archival Quality

With their four- and five-part harmonies, dense layers of instrumentation—everything from effect-heavy ukulele to pedal steel to flugelhorn—and painstakingly collaborative songwriting process, Grand Archives’ gorgeous self-titled debut seems more fit to be titled Everything All the Time. To clarify: Yes, Mat Brooke was a member of Band of Horses when the album that actually bears that title became a surprise hit. But no, he’s not looking in the rear-view mirror pondering his time with the band. (Brooke wrote Everything’s two aching ballads, “I Go to the Barn Because I Like the” and “St. Augustine,” both reminiscent of his work with underground bedroom-pop legends Carissa’s Wierd, for which current tour mate Sera Cahoone played drums.)

As he spoke to the Scene by cell phone between Philadelphia and New York, Brooke was fixated on the road ahead. At least figuratively. “On the next record, the band will finally have an identity,” he says, meaning that—he hopes, anyway—onlookers will stop focusing so much on him and the band he used to be in, and start taking Grand Archives for what they are: a rich amalgam of abilities and ideas. “We want to express ourselves as a cooperative and I think, with the next record, [public perception] will start going that way,” he says.

Considering the ridiculous amount of talent in the Grand Archives lineup, public perception would do well to catch up with reality. Ron Lewis and Thomas Wright are arguably two of the best rock drummers in Seattle—Lewis played The Ryman as the tour drummer for Fruit Bats—and neither of them plays drums in Grand Archives. (Lewis plays a variety of instruments, Wright guitar, though according to Brooke, everyone ends up behind the kit at some point during the recording process.)

An embarrassment of riches doesn’t always add up to easy collaboration, but Brooke says it’s all for one: “Everybody has to be patient with each other...but in the end the final product is a little more interesting to listen to,” especially live. “Everybody is that much more invested in it,” he adds. “Everybody’s having fun.”

While their first touring stint—opening for Modest Mouse, whose fans were, shall we say, interested in seeing Modest Mouse—might not have felt like much fun at the time, Grand Archives have come through it to put together a varied and engaging first album. At times, melodies are stacked with variously plucked, bowed and otherwise intoned instruments into delicately balanced arrangements, à la Pet Sounds. At other times, crisp, sweeping guitars and an undertow of momentum carry the day. (The opening track, “Torn Blue Foam Couch,” switches from the former approach to the latter at about the 43-second mark.)

Throughout, The Grand Archives is an exercise in pop both airy in texture and emotionally fraught in content: The first seconds of “Miniature Birds,” with a buoyant whistled melody and harmonica line, sound almost like they could open a ’70s children’s show, but then the lyrics begin, “Westward course of empire got / Its wheels turning faster and on to disaster / So long, long, such a long way to go....”

Grand Archives may have a long way to go before people stop mentioning a certain other band in the same breath, but with a memorable album under their belts, another in their sights and a lineup full of cleanup hitters, their collective wheels are certainly turning in the right direction.