Rainy Day Music #8: Grape Blueprints Pour Spinach Olive Grape

Jesse Paller

Last week‰’s Rainy Day album, High Violet by the National, was chosen by one of the Camerons in my life and dealt with rain concretely, as a recurring lyrical theme. This week‰’s pick is Dilute‰’s second and last release, 2001‰’s Grape Blueprints Pour Spinach Olive Grape. Chosen by my other Cameron (C. Stewart), this album never mentions rain but manages to evoke it regardless.

Anderson‰’s cloistered nature contributes two major aspects of Dilute‰’s sound. First, the seemingly endless guitar arrangements on Grape are born of a technically demanding combination of arpeggiating, tapping all over the guitar neck and frenetic chord strumming that could only have been perfected during weeks indoors. Because of this, Grape takes the compositional potential of the sound of clean electric guitar to and beyond its logical extreme.

His other crucial contribution is his voice. It sounds as weak as Anderson was, creaky and anemic. While it may be a turnoff for people who judge a band by the quality of their singer‰’s voice, I love it. His vocal fragility makes more room for his guitar, giving Grape a feeling of profound space. Furthermore, in its keening, scratchy weakness, it is unavoidably human. Surrounded by a flood of gorgeous guitar stands a lone, weak human being, and his pathos is off the charts.

Although they are sparse, Anderson‰’s lyrics are minimalist triumphs. They alternate between nearly twee emotionality (“it‰’s hard to have a broken heart when love‰’s the only way out‰Û) and deranged fantasies (“I am a child with a gun/ I just might murder everyone‰Û). Sometimes they blur the line between the two (“My heart gets in the way/so I rip it out everyday‰Û). Often he simply resorts to repeating a short line (“All I am is you now‰Û) or even a single word (“life‰” or “inside‰Û).

Grape feels like a long suite. The first five songs move seamlessly along, and feel like an extended introduction to Dilute‰’s perfected sound. The meditative “Planet‰” transitions to an intense delayed catharsis in “People,‰” which in turn gives way to a mathy groove on “Apple‰Û. “Alphabet‰” is a masterpiece, slowly building over nine minutes from a single line into a symphony. “Explosion‰” floats with two of the album‰’s prettiest guitar parts, over which the bewildered Anderson simply repeats “so bright‰Û_ oh‰Û. Here and there the calm atmosphere gives way to frenzied bursts of sound.

The final trio, “0 Vs. 1,‰” assumes that you have now been introduced to the silvery sound. It then proceeds to take it to unprecedented heights. These 26 sublime minutes feature jazzy lopes, proggy explosions, moments of incomparable lushness, and lyrics addressing the binary nature of the universe. In the finale of “1,‰” Anderson repeats “I‰’ve got my‰Û_ feet on the… ground‰” in the album‰’s most tearjerking moment of a small real triumph rendered in musical ecstasy.

The reason Grape Blueprints Pour Spinach Olive Grape works so well with rain is the guitar tone. It drips and drizzles, pitters and patters, tinkles and splashes and cascades. Often, the guitar parts are placed all over the stereo field so their deluge surrounds you. You get the sense that if water was musical, it would sound like Dilute‰’s guitars. The album‰’s progression also mirrors that of a long day of rain; mostly calm, contemplative and grey, with occasional, aweing flurries of more intense weather. If you, like me, are extremely tired of D.C.‰’s propensity to rain during spring, this album is what you should listen to next time it happens. Rain never sounded like this before.