Grandaddy, for the uninitiated, are best thought of as belonging to a loose association of American bands who have risen to a modest prominence in the lean post-grunge years. Their confederates would include such determined mavericks as Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, Eels, Beck and New Radicals: acts who share a certain willingness to accommodate as influences not only the music they love but the music they--and the general public--have had no choice but to deal with. Hence, all these bands can evoke the Eagles as much as the Velvet Underground and ELO as easily as Nirvana. Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump is a fine collection of songs, mostly paced at a melancholic mid-tempo and decorated by queasy low-budget keyboards and songwriter Jason Lytle's eloquently fragile voice. At his most graceful, as on the sparse piano ballad "Underneath The Weeping Willow", Grandaddy sound like the Blue Nile might have if raised in Californian sunshine rather than Glaswegian drizzle--and that's a lovely thing. --Andrew Mueller