Music That's Different
One More Grain uses brass in an unexpected fashion: it battles the lack of affect that comes with most reverb-dominated music. Their weirdo-brass brings their sound back from the edge of apathy, punctuating each song and making it somehow less dead. This is not to say that reverb music is dead or apathetic, only that it expresses something necessary by sounding like something dead, or, rather, it sounds 'not like art but life', where climaxes are masked and need to be investigated constantly.
What I'm trying to say is One More Grain livens the reverb scene by slipping in brass, and in so doing, they achieve an individualist sound that is quite compelling. Similarly, their vocals are not beautiful in any traditional sense, nor do they make your heart clench, but again they are individual and precious. Daniel Patrick Quinn's accent (I think it's Scottish) shines through the sonic buzz swaddling the "Isle of Grain" EP, and so again the necessary apathy is punctuated by a sense of place, of life. He sounds like a poet reciting along to a jazz band consisting of Miles Davis and My Morning Jacket.
Listen to this album if you enjoy My Morning Jacket, or any music that is brave enough to violate pop-song limits and to inhabit a specific place, be it Scotland or Kentucky or ... The point is that the music is willing to be - and here I pause, because the word I'm looking for wants to be "different" but that's not what it is, exactly. I think the word is "itself", yes, Isle of Grain's music is willing to be itself, to speak the way it treats, and therefore it is inviolable, safe even from critique because it isn't trying to fool anyone into wasting their money. Give it a listen and see if you find your-self in their-self.