Longevity and diversity are two words that immediately spring to mind when contemplating the career and personality of DAVE GRANEY. With almost 30 years of experience as a recording artist and performer and a tireless commitment to reinventing himself through the exploration of frequently shifting group dynamics and sounds, Graney has produced a wildly varied and eclectic body of work spanning over 20 albums with bands such as the Moodists and the Coral Snakes.
As a songwriter who thrives on unfluctuating levels of creative energy to drive his detailed and graphic narratives and soundscapes, Graney has showed no signs of slowing down. Knock Yourself Out is his latest work and while it is a singular achievement in that it is his first record without a band backing, it closely reflects a disciplined and absorbed approach towards assembling music that is common to each of the albums he has been involved in.
Focus and planning may not be part of the Graney ethic in the eyes of fans drawn to the more ad-hoc and unhinged elements of his music, but by the artist's own admission Knock Yourself Out involved a great deal of thought and attention directed towards the recording process to ensure that the end product turned out exactly as planned. This fine-tuned method of strategically crafting the tone and structure of an album to create a sense of "time and place" has been a part of Graney's approach since day one and is a key to the music sounding meaningful and assured all these years later.
"It's a way to focus people on the way that we make the record," says Graney about the choice he made in releasing Knock Yourself Out under his name only. "Every record has been a bit different that way. The last one (2008's We Wuz Curious with wife and collaborator Clare Moore and the Lurid Yellow Mist) was a very collective record... We went into a studio and did it all together in one day." Working according to a structured model is also a way of being productive and cohesive. "With digital recording there are endless possibilities with time and space," he adds. "I find you have to have some strategy in place to have a bit of an event. Otherwise it's just endless."
Dave Graney's intentions for Knock Yourself Out as a musical statement are extremely concise and direct. The album is littered with boxing imagery with the title-track evoking the spirit and passion of the boxer as a metaphor for the singer's own larger-than-life persona and creative reach. While the singer freely invokes fiction and secondary characters, a trend stemming from his career-long interest in noir film and crime stories, the message behind the song comes straight from the artist's mouth. "I'm saying to people who think they know my stuff and might not like it to come and take me on if they want, to knock themselves out," he says. "I'm feeling so strong and powerful and vulnerable that I think they'll punch themselves out trying to attack me."
Knock Yourself Out is out now through Cockaigne / Fuse.
