Grand Champeen

Trackimage Playbut Trackname Playbut Trackname
Cottonmouth 02:07 Tools
One And Only 00:00 Tools
The Good Slot 00:00 Tools
Miss Out 00:00 Tools
Different Sort of Story 00:00 Tools
The Guts 00:00 Tools
Broken Records 00:00 Tools
Bottle Glass 00:00 Tools
No Action 00:00 Tools
Paid Vacation 00:00 Tools
Step Into My Heart 00:00 Tools
The Rest Of The Night 00:00 Tools
Wounded Eye 00:00 Tools
To The Ides 00:00 Tools
Gonna Be The Death of Me 00:00 Tools
Sister 00:00 Tools
One Foot On The Stage 00:00 Tools
What It Beats 00:00 Tools
Nice of You To Join Us 00:00 Tools
Nothin' On Me 00:00 Tools
Raul Vela 00:00 Tools
Sparks 00:00 Tools
Paper Rock Scissors 00:00 Tools
Rottweiler Hair 00:00 Tools
Four Years 00:00 Tools
Cities On The Plain 00:00 Tools
Prince Albert 00:00 Tools
The Sound That Made My Year 00:00 Tools
That's Never Why 00:00 Tools
More Than Just A Friday 00:00 Tools
Take Me Home 00:00 Tools
Leave It All Day 00:00 Tools
Matilda's Lament 00:00 Tools
$2 In Silver 00:00 Tools
No Hope 00:00 Tools
Can I See You Again? 00:00 Tools
Fakin' It 00:00 Tools
Alma Mater 00:00 Tools
The Angels Share 00:00 Tools
Memory Loss/Throwing Rice 00:00 Tools
Songs You Want To Hear 00:00 Tools
Olivia 00:00 Tools
Threw A Fit 00:00 Tools
Crossing 00:00 Tools
The Songs You Want To Hear 00:00 Tools
Lucky 00:00 Tools
Miles Ahead 00:00 Tools
Train Whistle 00:00 Tools
Heart is Blind 00:00 Tools
Standstill 00:00 Tools
Fortune Teller 00:00 Tools
Song About It 00:00 Tools
She Had A Boy 00:00 Tools
Back In Your Arms 00:00 Tools
Rinkside 00:00 Tools
Destructive Ear 00:00 Tools
Bayonet 00:00 Tools
Untitled 00:00 Tools
Full Of Shit 00:00 Tools
Can't Give It Away 00:00 Tools
Cowboy Song 00:00 Tools
Heaven And Hell 00:00 Tools
Paper, Rock, Scissors 00:00 Tools
Daisy Glaze 00:00 Tools
Easy Street 00:00 Tools
Strange Kid 00:00 Tools
Pro Gear, Pro Attitude 00:00 Tools
All The Kings 00:00 Tools
Sometime To Return 00:00 Tools
Records & Tapes 00:00 Tools
No Action (Elvis Costello cover) 01:58 Tools
Chains 00:00 Tools
The Angel's Share 00:00 Tools
Wastin' It Like I Do 00:00 Tools
Crashing Down 00:00 Tools
Rest of the Night 00:00 Tools
Closer To The Stars 00:00 Tools
Cottonmouth (Live WNUR) 00:00 Tools
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (AC/DC) 00:00 Tools
Just Want To Get You Alone 00:00 Tools
And Your Bird Can Sing 00:00 Tools
Tied To The Tracks 00:00 Tools
Can't Go Back 00:00 Tools
Marionette 00:00 Tools
Broken Glass 00:00 Tools
Stranger 00:00 Tools
Records and Tapes 00:00 Tools
Long Way Home 00:00 Tools
Freaks 00:00 Tools
Memory Loss-Throwing Rice 00:00 Tools
I'm So Tired 00:00 Tools
Root & Branch 00:00 Tools
Born to Run 00:00 Tools
Mellow My Mind 00:00 Tools
medley 00:00 Tools
Sun Don't Shine 00:00 Tools
Made To Be Broken 00:00 Tools
Spinnin' 00:00 Tools
Standing In The Doorway 00:00 Tools
Be On Your Way 00:00 Tools
Cartoon 00:00 Tools
Toys In The Attic (Aerosmith) 00:00 Tools
Intro 00:00 Tools
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If Grand Champeen's sophomore album Battle Cry for Help was an earnest, somewhat quixotic attempt by four ardent students of rock to demonstrate what they've learned from forefathers as venerated as the Rolling Stones and the Replacements, The one that brought you is the wee-hours afterparty where the grades aren't in yet and the drunken graduates no longer give a shit. You can hear this not-giving-a-shit in the tangled snarl of squealing feedback and excited cries that is this album's opener, a power-pop nugget tossed off with so little regard for its own perfection that it nearly tumbles into thrilling chaos more than once before each band member suddenly lurches into a last-ditch dash to see who can finish the song first. You can hear it in the cheekily rad riffs that adorn nearly every song and are wrenched out with such offhand ferocity that they recall the MC5 anticipating Thin Lizzy. You can hear it in "One and Only," a spot-on radio-ready ballad that has been slammed to tape so hot it sounds like it's coming out of a rapidly melting AM radio. But in the process of having a good time and rocking like they don't give a shit, these four alumni of "Grand Champeen…courageous, fighting and brave" (as taken from this album's penultimate track, a fight song entitled "Alma Mater") also happen to have created the album that most faithfully documents their live show, a sloshed bacchanal of towering riffage and throat-shredding screams that the band has slowly honed in grimy dives across the country since their earliest gigs in high school. Austin, TX regards Grand Champeen as a perennial contender for the most crushing rock band in town, and, on The one that brought you, you can hear why. Relentless rocker buts up against even-more-relentless rocker, criminally catchy pop melodies give way to gnarled guitar solos that suggest Neil Young filtered through Thurston Moore, and, at the exact moment when the guitar skronk and fuzz bass finally start getting too thick, the Champeens smooth things out with ballads as tender as "Step into My Heart" - all meandering guitarwork and breathy promises of love - or the wry, Magnetic Fieldsian "Bottle Glass." As mentioned above, these guys have been at it since they were kids. Main songwriter Channing Lewis, lead guitarist Michael Crow, and drummer Ned Stewart played together in high school in the early 90s. In 2000 they self-released their debut album Out Front By The Van under the name Grand Champeen - and later that year augmented their troupe with bassist and songwriter Alex Livingstone. Since then they've toured tirelessly including gigs with Spoon, Centro-matic, The Anniversary and several packed South By Southwest showcases. Battle Cry For Help was released in 2002 on upstart Austin-indie glurp to tons of critical accolades including frequent comparisons to post-punk gods from hallowed lands like Minneapolis and Chapel Hill. Hollywood came calling too and Kevin Spacey got it on to a GC tune on the soundtrack to last year's death penalty thriller, The Life of David Gale directed by Alan Parker. All of this makes the Champeens sound like a band that works too hard; thankfully, what went to tape on those late-night sessions at GC's legendary studio, The Adult Audio Megaplex, for The one that brought you sounds nothing like work at all. It sounds instead like a deafening midnight gig when no-one's there so the band starts playing for themselves, like the thrill of discovering something new or the giddy delight of really pissing somebody off, like the moment when a rock band previously too tired or too drunk to care is suddenly and violently animated by a savage blast of second wind. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.