Grails - Doomsdayer's Holiday

Former long-term residents of the Neurot ranch, Grails have always had something of the misfit about them. Their albums balance accessibility and eclecticism, generally not requiring the kind of esoteric suspension-of-disbelief behind the success of many of their peers. Latest opus Doomsdayer's Holiday changes all of this. The eponymous opener rolls steadily in from a blackened horizon before crashing, hellishly, onto our beaches, illustrative of its ominous title. The gentle, if sinister, string work and resulting comparisons to Dirty Three evident on the classic Redlight album quickly become but distant memories. Immediate Mate and X-Contaminations embark into a droning, swirling wilderness, making sizeable demands of the listener and by closing number Acid Rain they have virtually morphed into Wish You Were Here-era Pink Floyd. Certainly there are moments of brilliance throughout Doomsdayer's Holiday, but it's a marked, misanthropic lunge away from the the tone of their previous rapturous output.[Chris Cusack]