THE GRAPE & THE GRAIN — HOLY ROLLIN’ — THE REVIEW
The Grape & The Grain makes time-traveling easy with their album, Holy Rollin’. The album is steeped in a Led Zepplin-esque bluesy/funk kind of hard rock, letting listeners be transported back in time to some ’70s dive bar.
Starting off the album, and setting the tone right away, is the track “Anything/Everything.” The song features the band’s unique guitar grunge, loud drums, and high pitched vocals. The guitar solos in the latter half of the song brings in a bit of a psychedelic twist to the track. Both hold the long notes and keep pace with the rest of the instruments and the beat, creating a really interesting dynamic. In the next track, “Maybe I’m Crazy,” the band ups the ante and brings a hectic fast-paced craze to the album. Its mood is contagious, and the repeated guitar riffs help make listeners feel a little frantic and a little crazy too.
“There Were No Saints To Save Us” and “World Ahead” feature the same heavy bluesy/funk hard rock sounds found in the other four tracks on the album, and yet are slightly different. These two especially have the most biting vocals, yet they are just as nonchalant and unconcerned as the rest of the album. In the lyrics “till the damage done, till the pain is gone,” off the final track, “World Ahead,” listeners can hear the bitter pain in the vocals, yet it sounds so unconcerned with it all.
Overall I really liked Holy Rollin’. I loved that I could easily picture myself in some kind of desert dive bar for hours listening to the songs over and over. The tracks all sound similar for any classic hard rock lover to press play and constantly relive the past on repeat, yet they all have subtle enough changes that you could keep listening without getting tired of it at all.
Rating: 5/5
Top Tracks: “Anything/Everything,” “Maybe I’m Crazy,” “There Were No Saints To Save Us”