It's no secret that Graves have garnered a loyal underground following, with bandleader Greg Olin's winning laissez faire vocals and melodic sensibility, Graves have topped a catalog of consistently satisfying releases with Easy Not Easy. His croon is understated, sweet, and earthy, but his sonic palate is decidedly experimental. He has a penchant for off-the-cuff, rickety solos and scrappy R&B grooves that turn the otherwise pretty, laid-back ballads on their ear. A number of songs off Easy Not    [ read more ]

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Graves is in fact the pen name for songwriter Greg Olin. With "Yes Yes Okay Okay," he guides a cadre of sympathetic musicians (members of Norfolk and Western, Desert City Soundtrack, and Little Wings) on a second outing to a distinctly natural, sweetly exhilarating place. Whereas 2003's "Love Love Love" found songs ricocheting off each other within the confines of an album -- overflowing as they were with texture, mood, lackadaisical melody, and the occasional outburst -- "Yes Yes Okay Okay" dispenses with    [ read more ]

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Surfing is a sport which requires a mastery of some rudimentary skills certainly, but for those who do it frequently enough, it is an exercise in intuition, communion with the natural world, and for lack of a better word, style. It could be said Greg Olin has a surfer's approach to music. For starters, Olin makes music in the same way a person would do yoga. It is a practice. Songs are committed to tape as part of his regimen for living, not because a product needs to be assembled. Olin has therefore amasse   [ read more ]

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On his third album, Graves singer/songwriter Greg Olin totally reinvents himself. Where the previous albums had been largely solo bedroom pop albums, there is an expansiveness to To Sur w/ Love. That's Sur as in Big Sur, the almost mythical California beach town, and the album is filled with gentle evocations of '60s sunshine pop and '70s California singer/songwriter rock all over the album. Not that things don't get quirky, as is Olin's wont: "Deepspace Team" is anchored by a    [ read more ]

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The fourth album by Portland, OR's Graves -- as ever, singer/songwriter Greg Olin and various friends, including members of his Hush Records labelmates Norfolk & Western and fellow Pacific Northwest singer/songwriter Nate Ashley -- continues the fleshing out of Olin's original D.I.Y. bedroom pop sound that began on 2005's To Sur w/ Love. Cory Gray's keyboards and trumpet are hugely important to the sound of Easy Not Easy, giving the album an intimate feel that's very close to t   [ read more ]

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Continuing the string of winners that started with 2005's To Sur w/ Love, Graves leader Greg Olin maintains his role as the single mellowest dude in all of Portland, OR. It's not that put-on, hippy-dippy, Jack Johnson barefoot in the coffee house kind of mellow, either: despite the album title, Olin approaches his arrangements and performances like he's on the verge of drifting off into a nice mid-afternoon doze. Witness the second track, "Kampu Blues," which consists entirely of a couple    [ read more ]

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