Grant Hart
"Cool English teachers, rejoice: Hüsker Dü's Grant Hart is putting out a double album based on John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost." - Pitchfork
As founder and half of the songwriting engine that drove the mighty Hüsker Dü to his maverick solo work (has there ever been a portrait of a breakup as evocative yet anthemic as “2541”?), Grant Hart has cut a singular path across the last three decades of music. It is with great confidence that we say he has made an album to rival his greatest achievements. A double album based on John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, Hart distills its essence into pop and rock concoctions that nimbly flit through the history of 20th century music from Irving Berlin and David Bowie to... Hüsker Dü, even. Ambition is the topic and Hell is the location for this project that is ambitious as Hell. Does he pull it off? We say yes!
Although lines from the poem are rarely quoted directly, all of the menace, pain and devotion of Milton’s best loved work are here found. But where Milton’s poem was “unadorned by rhyme,’’ The Argument contain many complex couplets, especially the title track, in which not only the ends of lines rhyme, but the word that ends a phrase is the same as the first line of the phrase after it, all while conforming to the original ten syllable structure devised by Milton. Anyone who has ever had a conversation with Grant knows how patiently he chooses the words he uses.
While visiting James Grauerholz, former friend and secretary for William S. Burroughs, James showed Grant an unpublished manuscript for Lost Paradise, William’s science fiction story which portrays the fallen angels as men from distant planets and God as none other than fellow Missourian Harry S. Truman. James and Grant discussed adding music to William’s story much in the same way that Tom Waits and William conspired to turn the German folk tale Die Freishutz into The Black Rider as staged by Robert Wilson.
From that point the seed had been planted, and the seed grew into the most beautiful tree in the garden of Grant’s career! Domino invite you to taste the fruit of this tree, go ahead, taste it.
RIYL: Bob Mould, Frank Black, Guided By Voices, Sebadoh, Stephen Malkmus
TRY: #9, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11
Download Full Album Here:
https://www.piratepirate.com/downloads/
More Info Here:
http://www.dominorecordco.us/usa/albums/05-06-13/the-argument/
https://twitter.com/GrantVHart
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grant-Hart/356067441965
http://www.last.fm/music/Grant+Hart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Hart