Asthmatic Kitty Records

Jookabox

Grampall Jookabox: Scientific Cricket

Catalog:
Release date: July 24, 2007
  • CD

Enter the private, brightly infantile, electrically sanctified world of Grampall Jookabox’s idiot-savant folk-rock. The spectrum of influences and appropriations feeding into this album are impressively, almost schizophrenically varied. There are hints of early blues, notes of civil war ballads, and children’s sidewalk-chalk rhymes, all filtered through spastically epic and innovative intuition, creating a final product not unlike the early work of Daniel Johnston, though far more refined.

With their debut, Scientific Cricket, Grampall Jookabox emerge with the explicit goal of creating their own “anthology” of American Folk music, focusing on the strange, dark, and morbid characteristics of turn-of-the-century sounds. Complex choral crescendos, jungle drums, box-car lo-fi, and bubble-gum clean sound all make their way into this music. A score of sophisticated, epiphanic Alvin and the Chipmunk’s if you will; leading the listener through this tour of American Folk-history on acid.

[text taken from Joyful Noise Recording’s website]