John Grant
John Grant, 'Faint Positive Lateral Flow'
Up close and personal with John Grant and his keyboard, the magnified Covid-19 virus orbits. Faint Positive Lateral Flow is otherworldly, synth sounds pop with pizzicato strings, threatening drone bass and anxiety overtones. Lava lamp projections fleet across John’s face like clouds, a backdrop features the burning world of industry, floating burgers and dancing babies. John’s delicate falsetto voice asks, ‘where should I be? How should I be feeling?’ In this mutating, confusing world virus particles circle like wolves. ‘I looked in the mirror and decided not to blame myself for everything (just for a while)’. The whisper of self-blame might return at any moment. Camouflaged, John blends with the disturbing reflected pattern like the narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. The world turns. The song fades to a ghost of a melody. In Faint Positive Lateral Flow John Grant helps us to examine how we’re feeling, when the world we are used to is gone.
John Grant:
I think we’re all stressed the f*** out right now with all the different things that are going with the pandemic and climate change and don’t even have time to catch up and figure out how we feel. So I think it’s a good thing to give voice to those thoughts and feelings to maybe lighten the load. Maybe in some small way this can help other people figure out where they’re at by sparking that thought process in the midst of all the stress.
John Grant
About John Grant
John Grant’s journey began in Michigan, where he felt compelled to hide emerging same-sex feelings from his God-fearing family and community. He currently calls the Icelandic capital Reykjavik home. A Top 10 UK chart entry for his new album Boy From Michigan, produced by Cate Le Bon, the album received across-the-board praise “one of the great singer-songwriters of our time”. The last 11 years have been an astonishing era for Grant, since the release of his debut solo album Queen Of Denmark, Grant’s profile has risen through a series of rapturously received and chart-bothering albums that entwined acutely melodic chamber-pop with darkly glittering dance music tropes, centred on synth-pop and disco. He has created some of the most resonant singing and songwriting of the 21st century.
