What’s in a name? The Grand Parade at first doesn’t stand out as an overly witty or well thought name, but hold that thought for just a moment, but I digress. Names aren’t the be all and end all for any band, this will only serve as a comparison, or maybe just filling the first few lines of a review with nothing better to say, there is a point though. It quickly becomes apparent that there is something grand about this band, a bigger purpose, almost as if we’re about to embark on a journey.
With seven tracks this EP is almost a mini-album, despite the first track effectively being an introduction, ‘Carousel’ eventually whirls up into a massive frenzy which starts off ‘And Then We Came To An End’, a combination of intense, fast-paced kick-snare drumming, and fast guitars drops into a beautifully melodic chorus and then a brief instrumental section, which is simply blissful and oozing in elegance drops into the verse; with the help of a tactful lyric “Oh my gosh, reason seems to sleep when faced with things like”, seemingly providing the drive and passion to power through to the end of the song, the further it goes the more epic and grand it seems to become, before running into ‘Dreams In Colour.’ One of their strengths starts to emerge in that unlike so many bands, they appreciate the value of instrumentation and not every song instantly falls into a verse-chorus structure.
‘Dreams In Colour’ is one of the most instantly appealing songs on this EP, the chorus just soars and pushes the boundaries in which the previous songs seemed happy enough to dwell, basically it gets bigger and bigger all the time. The chorus at times feels massive, ploughing through the remains of the verse, which in comparison, though particularly great on its own, seems dull. ‘Youth Is An Excuse’ settles for a different niche, a little more accessible and instantly appealing, you feel like singing along straight away. ‘The Educated’ shows an appreciation for a riff and builds again into something big, the chimey guitars are almost mainstream by now, but the whole combination still feels fresh and exciting. Structurally their spot on here, there are huge pieces of the song which all merge into each other, it’s hard to keep track of where we are or where there is to go, but that’s part of the fun of listening to this EP; getting lost in the journey. ‘Act With Haste’ has a similar feel, something which is building, and when the chorus comes in it hits you right where it hurts, this is huge, grand is too small a word, this is epic and completely everything you should hope for right from the beginning.
In fitting with everything that came before, ‘Silhouettes’ is the perfect ending for the EP. Starting off slowly with soft down strums on a clean electric guitar, with a rim shot gradually building into a huge instrumental section, this sounds huge and completely justified. It’s strange in the way that once that huge instrumental barrage comes in the song is on a downward turn towards the end, with the repeating line “you take the hardest step”, which eventually breaks into opera-vocals laced with huge string sections, and the drums, guitars, bass, everything just works, just flows, just sounds right. The more you listen, the more right it sounds, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll go straight back to the start and listen to the whole thing straight through again; it takes the first listen or two to fully digest and appreciate what The Grand Parade have to offer, but the more you listen, the more you find and the deeper you fall under the spell.
So, what’s in a name? In the case of The Grand Parade it’s quite a lot, not always a parade, it never fails on being grand, check this out at your peril, you may well get lost and emerge a few hours later with nothing in your head other than the epic music that’s just passed through your ears.
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![Chris Maguire-The Grand Parade - Carousel-[Alternative]](http://hangout.altsounds.com/file.png)
Chris Maguire-The Grand Parade - Carousel-[Alternative]
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The Grand Parade EP
