Ears Wide Open: Grace Meridian

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Grace Meridian

Jim Fairchild has a long indie-rock lineage, dating back to his days as an original member of Grandaddy in the 1990s. He’s on his second tour of duty as guitarist in Modest Mouse (Johnny Marr served in between) and has guested on myriad other releases. But until this spring, Fairchild had not released any of his compositions since a four-album run as All Smiles between 2007 and ’12.

His new project Grace Meridian was originally going to be a solo venture until the singer-songwriter got a nudge from his wife Natasha. “She said, ‘These are the best songs you’ve made, you should work on them with her,’” Fairchild remembers.

The “her” in question is rising L.A. singer-songwriter Temme Scott [see next post], with whom Fairchild had been occasionally co-writing anyway.

The fruits of their labor is the four-song EP “Clover to Clover,” released in March and featuring Cold War Kids/Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer. Highlighted by the lead track “Gonna Need a Brick,” the EP is salt-of-the-earth indie-rock, full of biting guitars and evocative vocals sung in unison. They describe the the EP as “songs of belief, doubt and devotion,” and we’d like to believe there’s more on the way.

||| Stream: “Gonna Need a Brick”

||| Also: Stream “Clover to Clover” in its entirety