Leave Greta Van Fleet alone!
Greta Van Fleet, the frequently mocked Frankenmuth-bred, Led Zeppelin-indebted rock band returned with their sophomore record, The Battle of Garden's Gate because, of course, that's what it's called.
The band — brothers Josh, Jake, and Sam Kiszka, along with drummer Danny Wagner — released the follow-up to their polarizing chart-topping debut last to a flurry of three-star reviews.
“You would think that maybe at this point they would have moved on to ripping off less obvious Zeppelin songs,” Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan writes. “Nope. Their stairway still goes directly to heaven: 'Broken Bells' bustles in your hedgerow with such gusto that it’s not hard to imagine GVF finding themselves on the business end of a whole lotta legal action.”
Meanwhile, The Guardian, in what we think is supposed to be a compliment, compares Jake's vocals to sometimes sounding like an “ejaculating hyena,” and NME gives GVF some props for their technical skill but refers to the new record as being a “mixed bag of heavy metaphor and lazy observation.”
Well, if you've ever wanted to ask GVF about their influences, what inspires them, what their recent move from Michigan's Little Bavaria to Nashville has been like, or the question posed by many a GVF critic — why? — you may have your chance at 4 p.m. EST on Tuesday, April 20 when Sam and Josh partake in a Reddit Ask Me Anything sesh.
The brothers took to social media to share an image of Josh setting fire to a piece of paper that reads “Namaste, Reddit” with the details of their AMA, which can be accessed by visiting Reddit.com/r/Music.
Ahead of the band's Reddit AMA, one question we may want to ask ourselves is “why are we so mean to Greta Van Fleet?” This question, first posited by Uproxx music critic and author of This Isn't Happening: Radiohead's KID A and the Beginning of the 21st Century last week has got us thinking. Are we just a bunch of meanies? After all, GVF is kind of a breath of freshly recycled air especially when one considers the dire state of modern rock aka “guitar music.”
“To paraphrase the fake Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, there are so many buffoons in modern music posing as poets,” Hyden writes. “But Greta Van Fleet has the courage to be buffoons, which makes them poetic.”
He then goes on to call the new record an “exhausting listen” with no break from “monolithic rock god anthems” or ridiculous allegories and lyrics, which, as Hyden points out, appears to be something the band does not reject but doubles down on which, somehow, only makes them more worthy of respect.
“These guys are not geniuses,” he concludes. “But they are essentially good-natured, and they make me laugh — unintentional laughs are still laughs — and I’m glad there’s a band like this in our lives right now. My only request is that they write a song called 'Ejaculating Hyena' and have it go on for at least 12 minutes.”
We would totally listen to that.
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