Theo Hilton's rock sextet from Athens, GA,
Nana Grizol is a fresh and frisky, if somewhat ramshackle, outfit that hasn't really gotten out of the garage yet on its debut album,
Love It Love It. The childlike artwork on the album cover, credited to one "Sam Phillips," hints at the D.I.Y. feel of a band that sounds like its members learned to play their instruments about six months ago; they are still in the first flush of excitement at being musicians and being in a band, but matters of cohesion, much less arrangement, escape them completely. They just bash away excitedly, coming up with rudimentary chord structures to support Hilton's lyric-filled songs. The singer's words tumble out of his mouth in an adenoidal rush occasionally reminiscent of
Jonathan Richman or
Black 47's
Larry Kirwan, full of odd observations and ingenuously expressed feelings. The result is a debut that's engaging and amusing in the manner of a small child, the kind who might have drawn the cartoons on the cover. ~ William Ruhlmann