GRAND OPENING AND CLOSING

Listening to Grand Opening And Closing is akin to walking through the Elephant Man exhibit at a carnival. This twisted collection of dirty, dark monstrosities assaults you with the kind of off-the-wall sound you may expect from an album featuring "thing", "food containers", and "popping turtle" among its array of instrumentation. The completely over-the-top melodramatic vocals provide an excellent companion to the weirdness of the music. The vocals harmonies here are fantastic though they certainly don't emulate the traditional Beach Boys or Simon & Garfunkel harmonies. These harmonies are downright sick. Carla's voice (though not your typical "beautiful" female vocals) provide a great contrast to the demonic mumbling and rasping of Dan and Nihls (I like to think me and the band are on a first name basis).

This album gravitates to the extremities more than its successor would. For the most part we have brutal, busy, heavy songs or soft, almost ambient, slower songs with far less middle ground explored. Not a problem necessarily but it results in less variety than they would have on Of Natural History. Though everything is of nearly the same quality with not a bad song to be found until the album ends on a strange low point with the ambient-noise piece " Sunflower" which really only consists of some scarcely placed chimes and bells.

While not as strong as their follow up and most appreciated album, Grand Opening And Closing still delivers the goods. The band's sound and character are in full force here. The great theatrical and dramatic sense they capture (on par with that of Gabriel Genesis) is here too making for an excellent release.