Album Review – How To Make Wooden Planes by Grade School (2023) (Kingfisher Bluez)
After two highly impressive singles in the last eighteen months, Vancouver quintet, Grade School have finally released a long awaited debut that not only emphasizes their potential but also reveals them to be an act that can sidle around the more alternative domains of the jangle-pop scene with consummate ease.
Initially, the more they dwell in a sense of languidity, the more their slacker edge and beauty shimmer. As such, tracks best represented by Old Movies and Orange Juice, Been Too Long, Dear Diana, and Sweet Sixteen simper in the gaps between Spooky Boys surf pop and Mac De Marco’s washed out melodic that new acts such as Dress Warm and Tractor Beam have inhabited with such aplomb of late, whereas Freight Train and Are You My Girl juxtapose tight, luscious Ting Tang Tina style jangled riffs with the hazy, languid soft edges of Petite League style slacker/coastal pop.
However, the band is not content to just dwell within the reclines of laconic. As such, I Wish I Looked As Good as You Do and I Love You move towards the lowest of Lo-fi jangled sparsity of acts such as The Smashing Times and Brother of Monday and add an endearing sense of obtuse to the sense of all things hazy.
Far more eclectic than I thought this release would be, How To Make Wooden Planes has been played on loop most of the day and still reveals new nuances. What greater testament?
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