Grandaddy will release its first new album in more than a decade next year. It's called Last Place and is due out March 3 on Danger Mouse's 30th Century Records.
In announcing the album today the band released a new video for the song "Way We Won't," a perfectly rendered, classic Grandaddy tale of alienation and heartache in a digital age. While the song describes a broken couple who wind up living on the roof of a big box store, the video takes a different view. Actor Jason Ritter stars as a lone hitchhiker who just can't get a break.
"To be honest, I would have loved to have made a video based exactly on the lyrics of this song," Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle tells NPR Music in an email. "But I really like [director] Chris Grieder's treatment because the main character is an outsider who has taken to wandering and can't get accepted (picked up) by a varying array of characters. I felt it was important to place a girl in the cast of characters, someone who had some attachment to the loner guy and perhaps, just perhaps, was responsible for putting him on that lonely road. I have to say my absolute favorite part is the very end (you have to watch it)."
"I wanted bits of surreal humor to bring it all together," says Grieder. "Jason Ritter was having so much fun with the role while we were shooting, and he really did a fantastic job at capturing this sweet and gentle man who's constantly down on his luck, and maybe losing his mind a bit."
Hear Jason Lytle talking about Grandaddy's new music and the band's return to the studio after a decade-long break.
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