Two weeks after its release, Grapes Upon The Vine might be my favorite TV Girl album. [RECORD SCRATCH] You might be wondering how I got here.
A month ago, I was in a great place. An infant TV Girl fan, their music soundtracked a new summer romance, and as my relationship with the band deepened I wondered how it was possible the love was so young. A whole unique discography lay sprawling before me, and I had to put everybody on to French Exit. But meeting the friends broke my heart in two, and was when I learned TV Girl was... TikTok famous. "I like 'Lover's Rock', too!" Suddenly, I didn't know who she was anymore. If you're enough of an asshole to relate, you'll know that feeling's a crying shame.
Well, at least it felt like an event then, when Grapes Upon The Vine dropped out of nowhere a week later. We listened to it once while I made waffles, decided it was at the very least conceptually interesting, then stuck to the old hits thereafter. A sort of stripped back demo-y, drone-y, sound I didn't much care for pervaded the project, and it wasn't picking up any streams; the resounding consensus seemed to be one of shrugging disapproval. Mid? It felt to me eerily like another The Fall. It was at this point, at the ripe age of 18 (or 65 in Stan Years), I became a TV Girl boomer.
It's true there's enough wallpaper sound on this album to furnish a house, and Brad Petering's vocals range in listenability from lemon zest to Sleepytime tea. If you keep coming back like me, it's not for a rousing, holy spirit-inducing production (or, more likely, classic TV Girl riffs and breakbeats). Grapes Upon The Vine's a grower (cause Grapes lol) and after a halfhearted second listen in the name of the blog, I was surprised to hear some solid gospel hooks were still stuck in my head, days later. By the time I realized they were from a TV Girl album, it had gotten me. There's some good stuff here.
The gospel angle is strange. There's no denying the uncanny in this man leading a black church choir on "Big Black Void", something only possible through advanced sampling technology. And no way in H. E. Double Hockey Sticks did TV Girl find Black Jesus in between albums. Faithfulness can relate to religion or romance, and on this record a pure, shining faith is put through the wringer by resigned cynicism. Here, love and heartbreak take on low-key biblical proportions. A harp on the album cover resembles a scythe. But TV Girl's motivations aren't as clear as when someone like Kanye incorporates Christianity into his work. Some of these beautiful choir vocals get seriously mangled, to the point of sounding like they're being mocked. I think more than anything, the mismatch between the joy of the samples and their bleak context goes to show if you can't find happiness among the chorus, you're not going to find it anywhere.
Ultimately, you gotta decide if the repurposing of such meaningful black music across this album into something so warped and personal works, and how well it does. The best vocal performances are far and away all sample work, wrapped around pretty compelling songwriting, propping up flat production. It's different.
Whether intentional or not, Grapes Upon The Vine feels structured with TV Girl's amorphous TikTok crowd in mind. From my current point of view, the departure from pop was an earned declaration of independence with satisfying results. But I can't heap credit where it isn't due just to combat my second-hand guilt. Would that same rejection of expectations lose its provocative sheen if there weren't wide-eyed, easily dismissed new worshippers to be scared off, and an element of controversy? Mister Petering is pushing the project as a statement, and the old heads are gatekeep-y. In the end, he treats hymns with as much care as the choir of fans treats his music– looping the seven seconds he likes under his own song and dance and skipping the rest. As TV Girl's appropriated, it appropriates gospel. I've been a fan for a month and I know next to nothing about the genre, so I appropriate both to my own ends (Are the gospel heads mad?).
I'm just happy to see an artist I like grappling with these ideas through their music. Maybe in the end that helped win me over. Art is an expression of a deep love for something... God, creation, fans, inspiration, pettiness. It's an investment and engagement in this world, made real. Whatever drew you in to begin with, even if it's long faded, there's no going back. To love is to be changed. Like fruit to wine, like Grapes Upon The Vine.
Take what you want...
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