BACK TO ROOTS LAND

Having taken a couple of weeks before going back into Sébastien Gramond's vast musical journey freshly. While I still cannot find any binding theme for this 'Roots Land' saga that this French multi-instrumentalist and avid composer has crafted over the course of several albums, it is clear to me that this is some of his most varied material to date. Ranging from grungy rock tunes to some jazz and even a pop-folk tune, Sébastien Gramond is obviously not one to be pigeonholed in any one genre. However, he fails to make any of these styles excel for the most part, and that equates to 'Back To Roots Land' turning out to be a rather incoherent mess of style experiments that only partially delivers.

As always, Gramond is a good musician here, but his ability to play a bunch of different instruments skillfully has never been an issue. Instead, his vocals here really tend to bog down the music, and all of the sound is done in a rather lo-fi production, further making the album sound like something that's better to skip over. However, 'Back To Roots Land' does find some strengths in it. The track 'Summer Field' may be the only truly great song here, but it is certainly worth a listen. It is by no means original in sound- taking quite a bit of influence from late '60s psychedelic era singer songwriters- but it is a pleasant acoustic change from the rather wandering jam-style that Gramond usually employs.

The styles here keep changing from track to track, so things would tend to feel incoherent even if this album had been a more involved project of Gramond's. I can see a newcomer to this man's work finding alot of interest here, but besides one track and a few disparate moments, it rarely feels as if the music here is contributing anything really new to what Gramond has done in the past.

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