Grant Lee Buffalo

Mighty Joe Moon (Warner Bros.)
by Jim Dennis

You put your hands on a ouija board and you get a message from who knows where – that’s what music is like. You never know if you’re moving it, or you’re being moved by it,” explains guitarist/singer/ songwriter Grant Lee Phillips, one-third of L.A.’s Grant Lee Buffalo, on Mighty Joe Moon (Warner Bros.). The band continues to explore its distinctive blend of ethereal, somber folk and big, ungodly noise on their impressive follow-up to last year’s Fuzzy. Phillips and his bandmates, bassist Paul Kimble (who produces and engineers the band’s material) and drummer Joey Peters (who has drummed with John Lee Hooker), make use of everything – from pump organs to acquired hunks of metal – to enhance their stories of all that is bleak America. On the album’s first single, the gorgeous ballad “Mockingbird,” Phillips effectively blends a deep baritone with a high falsetto vocal over the songs’ trance-inducing, Mazzy Star-like groove. Opening for R.E.M. will give a wide audience an opportunity to let embrace their brand of American folk-grunge and dark tales of ghosts, voodoo, and bagging groceries at the supermarket.