Grapes of Grain: Christmas Grapes

Dutch Americana duo Grapes of Grain are quick to follow up their Painted Windows album with an EP for the holiday season, Christmas Grapes. They steered clear of the sugarcoated piece on earth and religious fodder and went for a more personal touch instead. Christmas TV (I Want The BBC) is an ode to Auntie as the go-to channel for a good movie - quite appropriately they filmed the video at Amsterdam's finest movie theatre Tuschinski.

There Is A House In The Distance finds them digging into their country leanings Berend Jan Ike leading the way on banjo. As the track progresses singer Julia Cunningham joins Alexis Vos and it looks like they will put the song to bed gently until - surprise!- the guitar sound becomes mangled in the lead up to the feedback in the coda. It would have a great way to bow out, but they decided to use the short July In The Winter as well, with Ike messing around on ukulele and landing on a catchy riff.

Grapes of Grain: Painted Windows

Dutch Americana duo Grapes of Grain do a quite bit of genre-hopping on their new album Painted Windows. Whatever style they picked, whether it's alt-country, power pop of indie rock with a hint of garage, the melody always comes first. Singer-songwriter Alexis Vos usually gets the ball rolling, recording demos which he sends to his band mate Berend Jan Ike, who - as a multi-instrumentalist - can bring the song to the next stage. With that modus operandi there is ample opportunity to figure out what will work best and if it a good idea to make a few calls to their circle of friends and former band members to add a specific instrument to the mix.

Melancholy and optimism are playing catch in the lyrics - case in point: the album's closing track Lifeline. Vos prefers the position of an outsider looking in most of the time, giving him just enough distance from the subject matter to get to the core. Bonus points for writing a song about Jonathan Richman and sneaking a bit of Dirk Heuff's guitar tone into Fatal Flower.