The small mysteries behind Grumpy’s big gestures

Photography by Michael Tyrone Delaney I have a lucid memory: A few years ago, talking to a friend about the Beatles, he said, “They started with silence. And they made ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.” I couldn’t argue; it was a momentous feat to begin in a room, bereft of all noise, with guitars and drums (and a cello and an Indian swarmandal and a Mellotron), and emerge, somehow, with “Strawberry Fields Forever”. I understand this is an oversimplification. Enthusiasts not unlike myself have written, at length, about the complications in this equation – about how the track’s final version combined the band’s 7th and 26th takes, even though their keys and tempos did not match up. About the fake-out and the coda and even the “Paul is Dead” nonsense. I understand all of that, but still I know an undeniable truth: first, there was nothing – and then The Beatles came along and did something – and then there was “Strawberry Fields Forever”. When I speak to Heaven Schmitt, the songwriter and bandleader of Grumpy, he describes a similar train of thought. I’d ask him about the song “Crooked Teeth” from Death Cab for Cutie’s 2005 confessional indie rock masterpiece, Plans, a song he had previou...