Grampall Jookabox :: Ropechain :: Joyful Noise Recordings

HOME | CATALOG | ARTISTS | MEDIA | ABOUT

VIEW CART | JNR RADIO

CATALOG

PRESS

MP3: The Girl Ain't Preggers

JNR Player 1

COVER (300 DPI, JPEG)
ONE-SHEET (PDF)

Grampall Jookabox
Ropechain

Catalog Number: jnr25
Release Date: 11/04/08

CD + MP3: $10

Vinyl + MP3: $12

(black vinyl)

MP3: $7

Track List:

Black Girls
Let's Go Mad Together
Ghost
Old Earth, Wash My Beat
The Girl Ain't Preggers
You Will Love My Boom
I Will Save Young Michael
The One Thing
We Know We Might Be Fucked
Strike Me Down
I'm Absolutely Freaked Out

Recognizing the presence of a particularly assertive muse, David Adamson cancelled a weekend of shows to sit at home in a dank basement, writing and recording a string of songs that seemed to arise spontaneously. Granting them his full attention, a week of intense composition and arrangement bore Grampall Jookabox's second album: Ropechain.

After the ominous, trembling, synthetically angelic choral intro on the first track of Ropechain, Jookabox breaks in with a vision that sounds like a bizarre hybrid of a P Diddy rap video and ancient cosmology; "Black girls walk on tips of mountains/ Black girls jump seas like they was fountains...Black girls build skyscrapers with their brains/ Black girls do shit that I can't explain/ But, Black girl won't you do it again? / Black girls are built to walk across the seas/ Black girls convince the icecaps to freeze/ A black girl was the mamamama of everyone you see."

One of Ropechain's themes is the paranormal. Says Adamson,"I was interested in paranormal experiences, because I guess I was having them or something? I don't know. Definitely some weird shit was happening." Listeners may be inclined to agree. On the album's third cut, "Ghost," dirge-like vocals evoke Casper keening through an old time radio about the simultaneous omniscience and heartbreaking tunnel-vision of the dead in soft, helium-pitched whispers. Jookabox sings: Your limbs go sweeping through my room at night/ I can see your purple body swell and fall/swell and fall/swell and fall. "Ghost" is followed by a knee-slapping sing-along about a pregnancy scare turned lamentation ("The Girl Ain't Preggers"). Despite the album's dizzying musical and thematic eclecticism, there's a mysterious logic to its arrangement (or perhaps it's simply a paranoid interpretation of irrational datum).

Madness is another of the album's unifying thematic threads; "Some of the samples on 'I'm Absolutely Freaked Out' were recorded in a vacant insane asylum," Adamson explains. "I Will Save Young Michael," Jookabox's tragically affectionate love-letter to Michael Jackson, ponders the razor-fine boundary between aesthetic illumination and neurotic burnout. On "Let's Go Mad Together" he sings: Let's accept madness together / I need a partner in crime / I am too weary to fight it, honey /And it could be a good time.

The idiosyncratic lyricism of the album's love songs is sure to warm the cockles of listener's hearts. When echoing vocals ascend after the darkly, bass-heavy intro to "You Will Love My Boom" and Jookabox shouts, "I love you love you/ You know I love you I love you/ I took mushrooms and then proposed to you because I love you love you," it's a hard-hearted listener who won't laugh with joy at the dissonance between the tender lyrics and the dread-heavy distortion of their accompaniment. Ropechain braids holy fear, schizophrenic inspiration, baroque pop-references, and deep, mystical love into a formidable work likely to leave aficionados of rock-n-roll trapped in an obsessive cycle of listening and re-listening. Get your tickets here.

"Torn between penury and paternal urge, Indianapolis blues-psych recluse David Adamson stomps and wails through a post-pregnancy-scare sing-along"
Spin

"From paranormal themes to the genius/madness precipice, this one-man experimental collection bewitches and beguiles on repeated listen."
Mojo

"A fusion of experimental Indie-Rock, Punk/New Wave, Folk, Psychedelia, Noise, Hip-Hop, Blues, Gospel and Electronica drenched in so much dubby reverb and echo that the effects box might as well be considered an instrument in its own right, with surreal-but-purposeful songwriting, Ropechain has easily earned a place as one of my absolute favorite albums of 2008."
Okayplayer

"If you've ever found yourself pondering what Simple Kid would sound like if he went completely insane, then Grampall Jookabox has the answer. Splicing psych-techno music with funk, Americana, punk, and any other genre he can grope, Ropechain is a hedonistic headfuck of a record that will leave you wandering what's just abducted your ears."
Music OMH

"One part lo-fi, one part hip-hop you don't know whether to blush and act all bashful or your cup your genitalia and gesticulate wildly..."
Subba-Cultcha

"A ferocious, funny, and often fascinating mash up of clattering chorals and distorted incarnations"
Time Out New York

"Nervous energy drives the record between straightforwardness and opaque abstraction."
Tiny Mix Tapes

"Following in the footsteps of his solid debut from last year, Scientific Cricket, Grampall Jookabox returns with a nice follow-up. And although last year's album was painted with 'folksy' roots filled with airy guitars and almost transparent drums, David Adamson hasn't lost any of his ironically funny and comical lyrics... It's great music and it clearly showcases the fact that Grampall Jookabox should have a steady and successful career ahead of him."
Delusions Of Adequacy

"Ropechain is all soul. Intelligently written and undeniably fun, it will go down as one of this year's best, as well as the next step in the burgeoning legacy of Grampall Jookabox. You, dear reader, are urged to go out and buy this record as soon as you can. It will eat you whole."
Indieville

"It's both harrowing and funny, and it's a notion that a lot of long-winded, self-serving, home recording indie artists would do well to emulate."
All Music Guide

"There's an important lesson buried in Grampall Jookabox's pop-collage growers: Never underestimate the audacity of dopes."
Village Voice

"Grampall Jookabox is a total nutjob...and I mean this as a compliment of the highest degree. The songs on his second release Ropechain are a chaotic delight. The sounds are infused with 60s garage, mid-90s skronk, 70s funk, and just some really amazing fucked up shit that I ain't never heard before."
Viva Indie Rock

"Were you thinking about going totally fucking apeshit crazy, but you just didn't have the right album to listen to while you were doing it? Well, captain, today's your lucky day because Grampall Jookabox is one hell of a go-crazy record with track titles like The Girl Ain't Preggers and We Know We Might Be Fucked."
Wide Eyed

"Hip hop meets clangorous avant-pop, with a dash of hard-driven rock thrown into the mix... With Adamson at the wheel, the listener may feel like they're being driven to the madhouse; but they're likely to enjoy the tunes played on the trip."
Sequenza21

"On Ropechain, Grampall Jookabox (aka David Adamson) unleashes a miasma of styles to create a swampy soup of Aesop Rock style musings, tic-ridden future angst, faux hip-hop beats that meet the tendrils of the Deep South and a sardonic sense of humor to create what must be one of the year's most bizarre releases."
Spectrum Culture

"Ranges from the cosmic to the mundane, from giddy happiness to dark paranoid delusions... The tunes on Ropechain are all love songs of one kind or another, mostly other, with Adamson brilliantly conveying the ambivalence most people feel in the face of overwhelming emotion, and sometimes even everyday reality."
Crawdaddy

"Ropechain is sometimes frustrating bordering on indulgent, but it also depicts, without censorship, Adamson's unique process and point of view."
Prefix

"Eccentricity is what defines Grampall Jookabox and their sophomore effort Ropechain, but that doesn't make it any less listenable. In fact, Ropechain has its fair share of fine musical moments that actually benefit from the bizarre tendencies of the group."
URB

"Good ideas lurk throughout the album, but they either disappear under the weight of too much echo and overdubbing, or get pushed aside as a result of what I'd imagine is either a lack of discipline or dissenting voice during the creative process."
Pitchfork

PRESS RESOURCES | DIGITAL DASHBOARD | CONTACT