Cannonball’s coverage of the NYC music scene

Review of The Grasping Straws’ self-titled debut album (originally published in Boog City 97)

It begins with the driving, chaotic jazz-rock explosion “Strange State of Affairs”, inspired by the impact of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Continues into “Home”, a slow, melancholy song about the experience of leaving a childhood home, and losing all the memories it holds.

“Home”, like the following song “Just a Memory”, captures common human experiences of lost time, lost love, and the limitations of memory, and presents them to the listener in clear, carefully crafted songs. Stories and experiences are collected, like fireflies in jars, and let out into the world as oversized butterflies, who may boast intricately patterned wings, but remain true to their origins.

This is the world of The Grasping Straws, as heard on their self-titled debut album, slated for release this spring.

The Straws formed in the summer of 2012, fronted by East Village-based musician Mallory Feuer. Two years of consistent performing in and around New York followed, with several major shifts to the band’s lineup and sound.

The CD spins onward, with “How Will I Grow” and “Say it Ain’t So”, two songs about a destructive relationship, with a whirlwind of confrontational, nightmarish lyrics over dense, complex musical arrangements.

If the first three tracks were a weather report to alert us of a hurricane of troubled dreams and memories, we’re now swept into the eye of the storm, and all those troubled dreams and memories become reality. Vocals once contained, careful, and detached, are now untethered, raw, and emotive.

As the storm passes, we’re eased into the slow, hard-hitting break-up ballad “Your Face”, where we’re faced with the eerily repeated line “I can’t believe the things I’ve seen”.

The album closes out with “Don’t Hold Your Breath”, a platter of mixed feelings and images of a hopeful new relationship forged in a world of trauma and distrust. This brings a different kind of chaos. The slower music, subtly modulating between major and minor keys, is set behind words eternally modulating between the joy of falling in love and the biting pain of uncertainty and hesitation.

The album was recorded last year, in an analog studio in Woodstock, N.Y. with Basement Floods Records. It’s a record of one of their previous incarnations, a rock quartet with Jim Bloom on drums, Sam Goldfine on bass guitar, and Rob Krug on lead guitar. Bloom and Goldfine hold down the rhythm section nicely, and Krug’s guitarwork adds a lot of extra flavor and expression to the mix.

As of January 2015, The Grasping Straws perform as an acoustic trio, with Mallory Feuer on acoustic guitar and vocals, Oliver Budiardjo on cajon, and Jake Strauss (of New York-based band Thaddeus Strauss) on upright bass. The band’s spirit and passion remains intact with its new lineup, and as heard on the album and in live performances, the Straws are great at creating beauty from confusion and contradiction.

The music is grungy rock, except when it’s jazzy folk. The lyrics are strong, heavy, and firm, yet fragile, subtle, and unstable. The stories are clear and literal, but mysterious and open-ended. It’s sure to leave any listener “grasping at Straws”.

– Jesse Statman

Read more of Cannonball’s coverage of the NYC music scene from this era:

1. Review of The Grasping Straws’ self-titled debut album
2. Profile of Stu Richards, formerly known as Chicken Leg
3. Review of Thomas Patrick Maguire’s In The Bag
4. Review of The First Law’s She Traveled With Me
5. Review of Little Cobweb’s Indelible Marks
6. Review of Zack Daniel’s Memoirs of a Scared Teenager
7. Review of Prewar Yardsale’s Black and Blue
8. Review of Yeti’s Pill
9. Profile of Horra
10. Profile of Lauren O’Brien
11. Review of Nancy Paraskevopoulos’ Comfort Muffin
12. Blurb for The Icebergs’ Eldorado