JOHN GRANT’S music, and by extension himself, is composed of many layers which only reveal themselves after several careful listens. Indeed the best songs are always like this, even those which on the surface appear very immediate.
John Grant, who plays Strange Brew in the Róisín Dubh on Thursday May 5 at 9pm, was born in Michigan and spent many years in Denver, where he would later form the band The Czars.
Despite much critical praise and four albums, they never really took off, and Grant took time out from music to move to New York to study for his certificate in Russian medical interpreting - he speaks German, Spanish, and Russian.
Grant only played the occasional gig but one of them was most fortuitous. That gig was supporting indie/soft-rockers Midlake and so impressed were they by Grant’s singing that they invited him to record an album. Grant took up the offer and the result is his solo debut Queen Of Denmark.
Queen Of Denmark unveils Grant as one of the most exciting solo talents to emerge in years. His rich baritone, gift for melody and anthemic choruses; his intelligent lyrics, and classic songwriting ability led the album to featuring high in the Best of 2010 lists, with MOJO making it their Album of The Year and declaring it the work “Grant has been waiting his whole life to make”.
It is these above qualities, plus the many layers and depths to his songs that make Grant’s music such a rich, rewarding, and - let’s not be afraid to use this word, because it is an important quality - enjoyable listen.
Yet Grant’s music requires some effort on the listener’s part. On first listen to Queen Of Denmark it is hard to know if he is a serious singer-songwriter who loves 1970s’ soft-rock or if this is a clever satirisation of the form by a musical comic.
It also comes across as a strange mix of the highly accessible and the downright quirky. How can he sing serious and deeply personal love songs one minute while poking fun at Sigourney Weaver the next, and telling someone to “f**k off now” later on?
Listen again, though, and everything starts to make sense. The entire album is Grant assessing his life and loves, his personal views and experiences, and filtering them through his wonderful gift for accessible melody, and his witty kind of sour and deadpan humour.
“I feel just like Sigourney Weaver/When she had to kill those aliens,” sings Grant in the anthemic ‘Sigourney Weaver’, but despite it’s seemingly flippant lyrics, this is a deeply personal song.
“The kids at school in Colorado got Porsches for their 16th birthday, and I was from this little town in Michigan. I was totally out of my element,” he says. “They’d call me a faggot - they had no idea they were right, of course, but I was still terrified by it.
“I felt like Sigourney Weaver battling those aliens, like I was on a different planet. It struck me as a funny way to talk about something horrible, to turn the experience into something else. I love sci-fi, especially movies like The Fly and Aliens where people metamorphosis. I think I gravitate toward them because of the possibility of becoming something completely different.”
Grant’s songwriting is strongly indebted to 1970s’ music, in particular the era’s pop and ‘West Coast’ singer-songwriter styles, with a touch of classic rock - try not to think of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Freebird’ when he hits the refrain of ‘Sigourney Weaver’.
“People haven’t been able to stop going on about the ‘70s so I thought I should dabble deeper myself and see why. But really what I’ve done is return to my roots,” he says. “When I first heard ABBA’s ‘SOS’ I just about came unglued for joy. Supertramp’s Breakfast In America and The Carpenters’ Horizon were also joys.”
Grant is also gay and his homosexuality is something he deals with in a number of songs. He has often suffered for his sexuality, and was once beaten so badly in school for being gay he wet himself during the attack.
Queen Of Denmark’s opening track ‘TC And Honeybear’ was written “for a very special man by the name of Charlie who changed my life”. Charlie is also the inspiration behind the magnificent and heartbreakingly honest ballad ‘Caramel’.
“That song is about Charlie, and still holds true,” says Grant, “which is why it will be hard for me to sing live. Nothing there is hidden.”
Grant can also be a very humorous lyricist. ‘Sigourney Weaver’ again: “I feel just like Winona Ryder/in that movie about vampires/and she couldn’t get that accent right/and nether could that other guy” or the bad tempered but irresistibly fun “You better f**k off now/you better leave me alone” of ‘Chicken Bones’.
“In New York, I lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a neighbourhood I grew to love but at first, the junkies and prostitutes horrified me,” says Grant. “The day I moved in, a woman across the street shouted, ‘You better lock your doors, white boy!’
“There were these chicken bones all over the sidewalk, and trash everywhere. One day, a little girl on the stoop saw my bicycle and said to me, ‘You need a Mongoose, baby!’, meaning this other brand of bike. Another time, one of the elderly prostitutes shouted out, ‘Calgon, take me away!’ which was the slogan for this ‘70s bubble bath. The comment wasn’t lost on me.”
Queen Of Denmark has been a cathartic experience for Grant but a deeply rewarding one for him (and us ).
“It was really uplifting,” he says. “It was emotional and painful too but Midlake believed in me and told me, ‘people need to hear you, and we’re going to make it happen. For me, there isn’t a word of filler on the album.
“I’ve made a very clear statement about where I’m at and who I am as a person, and that’s one reason I’m so proud of it, that I was able to articulate it. At least I’m being given a chance to embrace the pain instead of being afraid to move through it.”
Gugai will be DJing afterwards. Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and www.roisindubh.net
