release date: Jul. 23, 2013
format: digital (20 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,83]
producer: Grant Hart & Mike Wisti
label: Domino - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 2. "Morningstar" - 4. "If We Have the Will" - 5. "I Will Never See My Home" - 7. "Sin" - 8. "Letting Me Out" - 9. "Is the Sky the Limit?" (acoustic live) - 11. "So Far from Heaven" - 12. "Shine, Shine, Shine" - 15. "Glorious" - 20. "For Those Too High Aspiring"
4th and final studio album by Grant Hart released 3½ years following Hot Wax (Oct. 2009) is his first album on a label with some credibility. In recent years, Hart has become a more stable performer, he has fought for musical rights of his former solo releases as well as the music released with Nova Mob - these albums have subsequently been reissued in 2014 on Hart's own label Con D'Or Records. It also seems he has come out in better conditions - on the credit list of the album he addresses: "very special thanks to my friends and familiars who pulled me from smoldering ruins and helped build my New Pandemonium".
The album is of conceptual dimensions being based on John Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1667) and inspired by his friendship with author William S. Burroughs. All music is written and composed by Hart except the lyrics on track #1 by Milton. The Argument was released as a double vinyl album and consists of 20 tracks with a total running time of more than 74 minutes. Nearly all music is played entirely by Hart, who is simply credited 'instruments'.
It's mostly melodic alt. rock and indie rock with the usual bonds to psychedelic rock (tracks #9, #13, #15, #16, #20), oldies / standards (track #17), baroque pop (tracks #2, #4 - 7, #10, #11, #12), rock & roll (tracks #8, #16, #19) and experimental rock (tracks #1, #3, #6, #14, #18). Yes, it's a big mix but it never feels forced or out of context and generally sounds like one coherent whole. Hart plays and sings with strong vitality and he narrates with his blessed sense for melody and song structure without losing focus on the existential themes. Needles say, the album was met by critical acclaim.
Alas, the album was to be Hart's final. He appeared to be back from a life in the shadows - marked by many years with drug addiction and the effects of living with Hepatitis C for more than 25 years. He had gained the ownership rights of his many songs over the years, founded a label and appeared more focused than ever before. In his last years, he was plagued by treatments and hospitalisations. Grant Hart died Sep. 13, 2017 of complications from liver cancer and Hepatitis C.
[ Grant Hart remembered in local news ]
