Wednesday, February 26, 2014

The Good Graces on Potluck Records



Good Graces started out like most projects. You never intend them to last as long as they do but before you know it, it's something you're compelled to do everyday. It becomes a part of who you are and feels weird to think there ever was a time before thinking about it constantly. I can definitely relate to that idea. Kim Ware picked up a guitar eight years ago and started messing around, a few friends joined her and she started playing live. Fast forward a couple of years and she's hooked up with the Potluck label for this digital single available over at her band camp page. A preview of the full length coming later this year.

"Before You Go" has crystal clear shiny production and a forelorn huge reverb sets a lonesome tone for Kim to come in with a list of requests; take out the trash, let the dogs out... the mundane things that make up a lot of daily life. The track feels like the Mountain Goats in delivery and her vibratto in the upper register stuff. Mostly in the same disarming sort of honesty, raw as anything, missing you before you met. The chorus kicks in a few hundred voices while staying so minimal, to strip yourself down like this really makes a statement. It's a real song about the dumb things that really make a relationshhip. It's never about the grand gestures - its adding up all the stupid little things that make you really want to be with someone.

"From A-F" starts with a lower, somber fingerpicking, her vocals describing a nostalgic old tyme story of a couple of ladies falling in love in the 19th century, you know that's hard. Single people can't even bitch about not being able to meet each other. To be homosexual was serious insanity, to even find love back then... so you can imagine this is a real steampunk downer, but it's not. The way Kim's direct and to the point, laying this story out there of the practicalities of wearing a disguise. The pained slide guitar is a pretty good approximation of the impossibility of this thing. Guess what? Not only did her girlfriend kill herself but you're charged with murder. Jesus.

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