The Grand Prize - Venice - Landmark Records

Review by: Jennifer Perkins

Being original and unique can easily be mistaken for quirky and silly. It’s a fine line and Louisville, KY’s The Grand Prize teeter right on the edge. Sometimes they slip and lose their balance and fall completely to one side or the other. When this happens they are either just your run of the mill pop band or aspiring members of Indie music oddballs Ween. Majority of Venice is spent in a balanced state right in-between the two, making for an unknown band worth getting to know.

For the most part The Grand Prize’s CD Venice is a collection of light and airy casual pop songs. Brought to you the listener mostly in the form of a sole unplugged guitar and a man’s voice with falsetto capabilities. The record seems rather under produced, but that just manages to give the whole thing a really cool grainy 70’s feel. Take “Married to a Solider” for example. Acoustic guitar, distant brushed drums and crooning male vocals - the entire CD is very minimal. Even when the instrumentation is beefed up like on “Ghosts of You” (the best song on the CD), things still have a distinctly dated sound about them.

Then there are those more peculiar numbers that make The Grand Prize stand out from every other bleeding heart out there with a guitar. “Sleep on It” sounds like something you would hear in a Saloon with its funny player piano sound. Then you get to “Hey You! My Love” and there is some bubble sound effect throughout the song. Neither song is so odd that it is aversive, but rather so eccentric it is interesting.

As long as The Grand Prize manages to maintain their balancing act, I predict great things in their future. Temptation is going to be around every corner to pick a side of the fence and call it their own, mediocre Indie pop or over the top weirdo rock. Let’s hope The Grand Prize realize their biggest asset is their ability to take the best of both worlds and create their own.