MP3 Grace Basement - New Sense

Smart pop rock; catchy verses, soaring choruses.

10 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Rock & Roll, POP: Power Pop



Details:
"If I Should Fall from Grace,
Kevin Buckley steps out of the basement"
By Christian Schaeffer
Riverfront Times, July 11th, 2007

Of all the local albums to be released in the past year â hell, the past five years â one of the best is Grace Basement's New Sense. The music is smart, and the tone is varied without being scattered; specifically, it's a genre-hop through alt-country, basement pop, fuzzy rock and acoustic folk. More surprising is the source, 27-year-old Kevin Buckley, who plays every instrument on the record and who is primarily known for his mastery of the fiddle. Buckley performs traditional Irish music â frequently at McGurk's in Soulard and Llywelyn's in Webster Groves â but he's just coming into his own as the leader of a rock band. (Having recently settled on the moniker Grace Basement, Buckley performed under the title Harmony Band for much of the past year.)


Subject(s): The Cunninghams, Grace Basement, Kevin Buckley Perhaps it's not surprising that Buckley chose a band name with "basement" in the title, as the songs on New Sense began there. "Everything on there is just stuff that was done with no album in mind â they were all recordings that I was just making and doing for fun, " Buckley says. His home recordings were passed around to friends, many of whom encouraged Buckley to formally release the tracks. Soon enough, the project began to take shape and the best songs revealed themselves over time. "The further along I got in the whole thing the more it became clearer which ones to do. Like 'Santa Fe' â I made a conscious effort to record that song. That's the best recording I've done; it's really crafted and clean."

"Santa Fe" is one of the standouts on New Sense, and its deceptively simple structure and sucker-punch lyrics are emblematic of many Grace Basement songs. It begins almost like an Eagles song, with a simple acoustic guitar strumming over a loping beat. Little by little, the instrumental elements reveal their intentions: Double-tracked vocals provide a kind of Greek chorus, and a slippery Telecaster meanders over the tracks. A once-bubbly organ begins to growl and spit as the song's bridge begins, with the lyrics presaging a darkness on the edge of town: "I fear the new dark age is coming/I've seen the billboards on the highway." It's a heavy couplet for such an unassuming song, a sleight of hand that Buckley pulls throughout the record.

"Honestly, I like the bummer lyrics mixed with poppy, accessible music. I think that's what rock is good at," Buckley explains. "There's always a problem in each song â it's like a story. There's gotta be some sort of conflict â or who cares? You're not sitting down with a guitar singing about stuff unless something is causing you to do that. It's not just for music's sake."

Most of Buckley's musical life has revolved around the fiddle, and his involvement in the Irish music scene in St. Louis has made him something of a pillar in that community. While there is nothing resembling a reel or a jig on New Sense, Buckley sees a kinship between Irish folk music and the rock-oriented songs he writes.

"Irish music is my foundation, it's my musical bed," he says. "It's all melodies. That's all Irish music is â melodies â and then you improvise on them. And that's a good place to start with anything."

His ear for melody is unmistakable; New Sense is packed with simple harmonic riffs, complex vocal harmonies, and tossed-off lyrics that spring to life in the record's joyful atmosphere. "Green Machine" begins with a self-harmonizing Buckley singing "When guys see you, they like what they see," a lyric as brilliant as it is dumb. In the context of a Guided by Voices-like basher, it comes off as catchy and universal as the Beatles singing "She was just seventeen/you know what I mean."

Having settled on a four-piece band for live shows, Buckley forsees keeping the recording process a solo endeavor. And while he's more comfortable moving from the relative anonymity of his Irish music gigs to take center-stage with Grace Basement, Buckley hopes to get back to the basement soon. "That's what means the most to me â having a really cool record. And it's shitty because no one really buys records anymore and they're so expensive to make," he says with a laugh.