Press & Reviews

Don’t just take our word for it – the critics are raving about The Grapes and Western Sun!

 

“Western Sun is sweet dusty music brimming with Beatles Byrds and finger pickin’ good guitars. Sad wistful evocative by turns, Naylor and Richs voices harmonise and you feel those great open spaces and frontier towns come alive before your ears!” - Steve Kilbey, September 2013

 

“In A Word: Class!” – Beat Magazine review Western Sun

Check out  GRAHAM BLACKLEY’s review  for Beat Magazine. 

Naylor and Rich’s innate and extremely natural ability to weave rich melody that engages and enraptures even the most unsuspecting listener ensures that such spellbinding performances stick in the mind.

Rich has traversed many interesting musical pathways including joyfully glamorous garage-fuelled hard rock (Girl Monstar) and admirably authentic stripped-back country (The Rich Family), while Naylor’s axe-wielding dexterity and encyclopaedic knowledge of rock has seen him kick out the jams in Even as well as acting as a trusted musical collaborator with luminaries such as Stephen Cummings and Paul Kelly. Together as The Grapes, Naylor and Rich have created some truly beautiful music that nods to the past whilst sounding crisp and fresh.

Their debut album back in 1999 was so deliciously hook-laden that it was tempting to play it non-stop. It comes as no surprise then that Western Sun is jam-packed with melody and ripe for replaying. The mood seems warm and the vibe summery as The Grapes embrace the type of powerpop that Badfinger would have been proud of (Step Inside), sweet indie pop that conjures fond memories of the much-missed Ice Cream Hands (Lily Darling) and moving psych-tinged country (In The Night Pasture). One of the many highlights of this fine album is Ride On Lonely which seems to channel Nancy Sinatra’s best work with that celebrated moustache-sporting tripper Lee Hazlewood. Rich’s vocals are perfectly suited to the haunting dessert-sun guitar that burns throughout the song and it is easy to imagine this dramatic track playing as the credits roll on some widescreen cinematic masterpiece.

Best Track: Ride On Lonely

If You Like These, You’ll Like This: Dear Departure SWEET JEAN

In A Word: Class!

Read the review on the Beat Magazine website

Western Sun review by Noel Mengel

Review of the Week : Western Sun

by Noel Mengel
The Courier-Mail

THE self-titled debut album by The Grapes has never been far from my stereo. Actually, it’s been there for most of the past 14 years. Many other albums have come and gone in that time, yet something about that one never seems to lose its flavour.

It might be soaked in ’60s influences – it must be the only record ever to feature covers of tunes by The Bee Gees and Gene Clark – yet it never feels out of time.
And here – miracle! – is a second Grapes album which feels as welcome as the first breeze of spring. Of course, this duo have quite a pedigree: Ash Naylor, of rock band Even and one-time guitarist for Paul Kelly, and Sherry Rich, raised on Bribie Island, now back in Melbourne after a 10-year sojourn in the US. (Her Dakota Avenue album recorded in the fabled Wilco loft, released last year, is also strongly recommended).

After all those years apart, the natural chemistry still works well, keeps each other on their toes.

In the end, their busy lives, finding time to work together between other projects, raising their families, certainly has done his album no harm and may have strengthened it.

The objectivity that brings ensures there is no flab, nothing that dilutes the whole.

Overall the sound is rather like the title and the cover, those rays from the west covering the field in a golden kind of light.

The hazy instrumental which opens (and closes) the album gives way to the ‘60s-drenched descending guitar riff of Step Inside; Make It Out Alive strikes a balance between ominous lyric and optimistic musical setting; Mama (Why You Hurt Me So) is a bristling pop-rock tune with Rich’s heartbreakingly beautiful vocal part lifted up by some George Harrison-standard guitar parts from Naylor. In The Night Pasture, with lyric by American poet Richard Watson Gilder, is as haunting as a lonely bird cry across the water.

Fans of that long trail that leads from The Byrds and The Band to Patty Griffin, this is for you.

 

 

The Grapes Reunite for First Joint Album Since 1999

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The Grapes are reuniting for a new album, “Western Sun,” and they’re bringing their songwriting chemistry back to their longtime fans through a PledgeMusic campaign for its release. We caught up with the duo to hear more about their first meeting, their new project and what occupied the space of time between the two.

Read Brittany Cooper’s full article on the Pledge Music website.

 

Noel Mengel discusses The Grapes

SOME bands outstay their welcome, going through the motions and never finding the magic again. Some have a golden moment in the sun and disappear almost before we realise how good they were. The Grapes are the second kind, a Melbourne band that released one self-titled album in 1999. Of course, the duo had form: Ash Naylor from the superb trio Even and the angel-voiced alt country singer-songwriter Sherry Rich. Put them together and sparks flew.

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At the time The Grapes hit the mark with fans of melodic power-pop, songs that felt like they had dropped from some long-lost vault of ’60s nuggets, from the classic riff’n’jangle of I Won’t Cry and Ocean Meets The Sun to the sighing country-psych of Marmalade. As the years have gone by it has become clear what a great record they made, bristling with energy, ideas and melodic invention.

The album’s two covers, of Gene Clark’s So You Say You Lost Your Baby and The Bee Gees’ Kitty Can, sent a signal about the kind of band they were and the kind of record collections where The Grapes would be right at home. I haven’t got a clue what other records I liked in 1999, but I know I have never stopped playing The Grapes. Or dreaming that, maybe one day, Ash and Sherry might feel like they could do it again.

Lovers of music with heart, with soul, with tunes that bury themselves deep inside, it’s time to rejoice. Here’s the sentence I’ve always wanted to write: The Grapes are back!

- Noel Mengel, 2013
Senior Music Writer – The Courier Mail Brisbane