Unbalanced Grass

Unbalanced Grass

Rock bands are an enduring format. The world will always have rock bands; they are the epitome of everything humankind has ever stood for. If you look at the state the world is in today, you’ll see an utter mess. Terror everywhere, panic, confusion, nobody seems to know what they’re doing, and even when they actually are doing something, they’re doing it wrong. Well, rock bands are a bit like that.

When I say “rock bands”, I actually mean “Unbalanced Grass”, because what I just wrote in the above paragraph pretty much describes the state of Unbalanced Grass following the eventual release of We Must Rebuild. Morti wrote an album, Adam Three Trillion continued to write his magnum opus, which remains perpetually unfinished, and Pookie K managed to squeeze something else out under the curious title of Buyer 2 in the year 2008, promptly terminating his solo side-project because, frankly, he’d had enough of it.

By this time, the band had been reduced to a mere three members – frontman Pooka, instrumentalist and botherer Morti, and backing vocalist Matt, who is also a DJ but hasn’t used any of that skill (yet). But where there is a will, there’s a way – so the saying goes, for some reason – and Pooka’s will was good. So, undeterred, he threw himself into a project called FAWM, and subsequently into Canterbury, where he and Morti wrote a few things – if we’re naming names, a ditty about being a teacher, a bizarre track with vacuum cleaner solo about Boyle’s Law of Gas, and a nice little song about being ignored in the world of music – something which was very close to the band’s hearts. Said song, Melted Into Sound, had the curious property of being able to lodge itself into the listener’s brain and not get out again. In the music industry, this is known as a ‘single’. Sorry… ‘focus track’.

Melted eventually got an outing at a gig for FAWM participants in March that year, and then later at an Unbalanced Grass gig in November. Even Pooka’s parents liked it, and so in a moment of weak will, he saw fit to release it as a single at the end point of the year. Free, and download-only, it hardly made any waves, but at least it was the springboard he had been hoping for. If they could write songs like this (catchy enough to play it over and over again, Morti making up new solos every time and Matt picking up the rhythm on a djembe after three bars), Unbalanced Grass could do anything they wanted.

They just haven’t done it yet.

Some new songs have had their outings at a gig promoting Morti’s new album (with Pookie K supporting) and another FAWM gig in the first quarter of 2009. They have mostly gone down quite well, but it’s likely to be quite a considerable period of time before anything bearing vague semblance of a ‘new album’. Pooka sat down to have a think…

…and emerged with two albums in his hands. Four All was a digitally remastered retrospecticus of what Unbalanced Grass had already done, while The Rest Of, apart from having an awesome title, was a digitally remastered retrospecticus of what Unbalanced Grass had done but hadn’t released. Apart, they stood high in their own right, but together, they made a force terrible to behold. Well, either that, or a special offer of £3. Either will do, I’m not fussy.

Now all that remained was to make these available to the world, and wait for more music to present itself…

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