Sorry, but…apostrophe? Not to be too anal about something that ultimately doesn’t matter, but you’re just opening yourself up to pedants making snarky comments (hello).
Nevertheless, House Of Multiple Grandmas have been creating a bit of a flurry for themselves lately. They appear to have entrenched themselves among the smaller or lower-card festival circuit this year, with a genuinely positive reputation following their post-punk. That’s not surprising for a genre whose patrons can never get enough of the stuff, a fact which Grandmas House do seem to have advantageously tapped into.
Thus comes Baby You’re A Winner and its concerted attempt to feel like its own thing within its scene. Chief among them is vocalist Yasmin Berndt with her hoarse, scuffed-up rasp that sounds legitimately like no one else in the space. Offset by something a bit more sweet and ‘standard’ from Poppy Dodgson, there’s such a unique and variable dynamic at the fore of Baby You’re A Winner. Blue Oblivion is especially good for it, as Berndt takes the form of a hypnagogic hum mid-mix that sounds genuinely cool and enticing.
Unfortunately, that’s not something that Grandmas House are all that equipped to continue on, due to Baby You’re A Winner’s other defining feature—its overall sound. Here, the post-punk default has been taken, moulded into a cube and left to play out from there. The guitar is a particular casualty, often struggling for purchase between being small and rickety, and boxy without much give to speak of. Just take Hurricane as your example, which sounds so deflated as its guitar drapes saggy and sallow over a fairly alright rhythm section.
The shrunken, insular production style does Grandmas House no favours in that regard. It’s not necessarily weak (The Table and Dance actually do a lot within their narrow means), but there just isn’t the presence here that you’d like. As repetitive as vast swathes of post-punk can be, a bit of nervy propulsion tends to be a starting block, at least. In going the other way into more introspective climes, there’s so little panache to be found here. Berndt and Dodgson do what they can in their main roles, easily the standout presences in both contributions and how they’re presented and balanced on the album. But that still leaves a good amount of negative space that’s so conspicuous whenever it’s there.
There’s still some good stuff on Baby You’re A Winner, obviously. DOG and Next Big Hit (Choo Choo) land in a sweet spot where Grandmas House’s post-punk works best, getting a little more frenetic and charged around their tattier edges. Dance is another good one thanks to its added brass, taking an already seedier, slithering atmosphere and making it feature-complete. There’s also a good amount of focus at the very, very centre of Grandmas House. They’ve got lyrical flavour and dexterity on lock, and songs like The Table and I Miss This House do contain an element of strength from that. At no point does Baby You’re A Winner feel like it’s slipping into outright disaster; it can still keep itself afloat.
Even so, that’s a title that hopes for so much and only scratches the surface, at best. Baby You’re A Winner has its moments and intentions, but to extrapolate those across this entire body of work would be stretching them thinner than they already are. It’s not some bold, new take on post-punk, as much as Grandmas House in a minimised state that can struggle to even register. At least they seem to be doing well enough from it, so more power to them. It’d just be nice if that power wasn’t confined to a nebulous platitude such as that.
For fans of: Sprints, Goat Girl, Sleater-Kinney
‘Baby You’re A Winner’ by Grandmas House is released on 21st August on Brace Yourself Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
