Grammar Bell and the All Fall Down

PRE-ORDER: Orders will begin shipping on or around December 4

Over Jagjaguwar’s thirty years, there’s a solid history of the label being fully supportive when an artist changes course. Think of the many Bon Iver offshoots; think of Rick Alverson’s move from songwriter to filmmaker; think of Sharon Van Etten’s move from folk to big, powerful rock. This goes all the way back to the beginning. You see, Manishevitz emerged from the white-hot cinders of the first-ever Jagjaguwar band, Curious Digit — and with it brought into crystalline focus the capital-S Songwriterly prowess of Adam Busch. 

‘Grammar Bell and the All Fall Down” was a flat-out rejection of most underground indie-rock tendencies of the era — away from crunch and into a chiming, folkier strum, though Busch can’t quite ever escape his penchant for non-traditional song structure. Viola dirges and murder ballads; horses and divorces. Songs of betrayal (“Fox Trot,” “Ice Pick”) and broken-wing Americana (“Creole Belle”). Yep, one might envision a Michael Hurley type while listening to a song like “Creole Belle,” not a hipster from Charlottesville. Then, on songs like “Love of Animals” or “Lonesome Cowboy Dave Thomas,” Busch goes toe-to-toe with some of the more lauded songwriters of that era like Jeff Tweedy or Mark Linkous. 

It’s the first time any of these original ‘Grammar Bell’ tracks have been on wax, and just to gild the lily, we’ve added a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee,” which is as relevant now, tragically, as it was when written in the 1940s.