Grandaddy’s magnificent second album The Sophtware Slump recently turned 20 years old. To celebrate, the quirky, proggy, synthy West Coast indie-rock cult favorites are reissuing the landmark release. The 4xLP box set will include the original album and two discs of rarities (including the Signal To Snow Ratio and Through A Frosty Plate
Glass EPs for the first time on vinyl). But perhaps most intriguing is the fourth disc, The Sophtware Slump ….. on a wooden piano, a new full-length solo-piano recording of the album by Grandaddy mastermind Jason Lytle.

Lytle originally wrote The Sophtware Slump on piano. In a promo email, the team at Dangerbird Records recalls: “One night in June of 1999, we were sitting in Jason’s tiny house in Modesto, California when he mentioned that he could sit down at the piano and play the whole of what would be The Sophtware Slump front to back. This meant he was (finally!) ready to begin recording. The piano was in the kitchen then so we sat and he started to play. Distracted by beer and conversation, we didn’t make it all the way through.”

Lytle said the pandemic created a scenario similar to the original Sophtware Slump recording sessions, which found him working frantically in solitude. The end results this time are quite different, though you might not fully grasp the change from our first preview of on a wooden piano: “Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground),” a ballad sung from the perspective of doomed android Jed. The original was already a mournful slow jam, so Lytle’s adjustments aren’t as radical as I suspect they’ll be when he gets around to “The Crystal Lake” and “Broken Household Appliance National Forest.”

Listen below.

Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump reissue is out 11/20 on Dangerbird. Pre-order it here.