FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Listen to 'Chalice Hymnal' - Grails' First LP in Six Years

It's gnarly, cerebral, ominous, cinematic, vast, and strange.

In a world where everyone, particularly post-Trump, is clamoring to be heard, where everyone is choosing sides, and making their feelings known, where people can feel like they don't legitimately exist unless they're contributing to the din, it can be refreshing to slide into airplane mode and press play and listen to music utterly barren of words so that the only thing to process and absorb and enjoy is the music, man. Grails' sixth record could be your salvation. Or at least some respite from the cacophony of words and opinions.

Advertisement

Grails have been MIA for a minute, or six years, but they've been busy of course. For one Alex Hall and Emil Amos are in Lilacs & Champagne, Amos is also in OM and Holy Sons, meanwhile cofounder Zak Riles is also a member of Watter. Naturally all these acts err on the experimental. Now they're back with their sixth album Chalice Hymnalpremiering below, along with a bunch of European tour dates. As you might expect from Grails this record is by turns calming and ambient ("Rebecca"), cerebral and spectral, ("The Moth & the Flame"), meditative and noir cinematic ("After the Funeral"), gnarly, mathy, and kraut rock-tastic ("Pelham"), plus a whole bunch in between. The sounds of a bunch of musicians stretching their limbs and reaching past the horizon.

"Grails was always dissembling itself after each record and eventually re-building itself into a new form for the next one," explains Emil Amos. "Around 2008 Zak moved back to Kentucky from Portland and I joined Om so our working method became pretty fractured. I'd pull into a studio somewhere and bang out a drum track to send to Alex who'd be editing things together while I was out on tour. Deep Politics was pieced together slowly like that and we had to use that method again now that Alex lives in Berlin and I'm in NYC. All Grails records directly reflect the production of the old/forgotten records we're researching at the time and those influences immediately get flipped into the studio. So Deep Politics was essentially a big fantasy library record whereas this one begins to drift fully into our addiction to 70s softcore soundtracks."

Grails Tour Dates

fri 03/03/2017 TR Istanbul Zorlu Center PSM - Studio
sat 04/03/2017 NL Amsterdam Paradiso w/ MAJEURE
sun 05/03/2017 BE Liege La Zone w/ MAJEURE
tue 07/03/2017 UK Glasgow Stereo w/ MAJEURE
wed 08/03/2017 N-IRE Belfast Empire Music Hall w/ MAJEURE
>td >IRE Dublin Whelans w/ MAJEURE
fri 10/03/2017 UK Manchester Deaf Institute w/ MAJEURE
sat 11/03/2017 UK London Oslo w/ MAJEURE
sun 12/03/2017 BE Antwerp Het Bos w/ MAJEURE
mon 13/03/2017 FR Paris Glazart w/ MAJEURE
tue 14/03/2017 CH Yverdon Les Bains L'Amalgame w/ MAJEURE
wed 15/03/2017 DE Esslingen Komma w/ MAJEURE
>td >AT Vienna Arena w/ MAJEURE
fri 17/03/2017 CZ Prague Divadlo Dobeska w/ MAJEURE
sat 18/03/2017 DE Leipzig Conne Island w/ MAJEURE
sun 19/03/2017 DE Berlin Musik & Frieden w/ MAJEURE

Grails LP Chalice Hymnal is out on February 17.