Let's Eat Grandma - I'm All Ears

Let's Eat Grandma
I'm All Ears
2018
Spotify

Let's Eat Grandma, if that band name doesn't say it all I don't know what does. The British duo of Jenny Hollingsworth and Rosa Walton work in the experimental pop space created music that is as wildly experimental as it is catchy. The album opens on a somewhat peaceful note with "Whitewater" but then all normality is blown to pieces with the SOPHIE produced "Hot Pink". At times the song sounds bright and fun but then it shifts into utter industrial pop madness. The vocals are sweet and young, but the lyrical content is so cutting and real gets to the heart of what a pop song can be. There are moments that are easily mistaken for brat pop hear especially in the vocals but there is always a sense that something is pulling this record more towards the middle. There is far less noise on this record than their previous, less of an emphasis put on ringtones and cat noises and more on dialing in the song. "Falling Into Me" has this really great electronic production and just when you think the song is over it switches gears and becomes something almost completely different. The almost six minute run time is totally varied but with a through line that you can always pick up on. It may seem like a move from their deranged fairy-tale musical style on I, Gemini would be a sort of dumbing down, but quite the opposite is true for I'm All Ears. In going  for a more palatable sound the girls have found something even more artistic.

Each song reveals itself slowly, always leaving some kind of surprise for you around each corner. "I Will Be Waiting" begins as this really rather sparse track, sort of basic percussion and arrangement but with each passing note it becomes something more and more complex. At the end of the song you are full enraptured and buying in to each word that Let's Eat Grandma say. Now before I get to far down this path, Let's Eat Grandma are certainly not done with the more obscure tracks or sounds. "The Cat's Pyjamas" is just a loop of a cat purring and licking...something as well as an organ being played through some kind of filter. "Cool & Collected" is their version of a psyc-rock opus spanning out over nine minutes with the girls' vocal slicing through the fuzz every now and again. "Ava" actually gives you some Bjork vibes and in a way so does this whole album with it's wild sense of artistic freedom. The record closes on "Donnie Darko" which opens with an almost surf-rock guitar line and then takes it's entire 11 minutes to build to a climax that is astonishingly beautiful and unnerving at the same time. I'm All Ears is a complex record with a hell of a lot to say and is an album that you absolutely should not miss.

.8.8 out of 10