 Cellar
Door |
 Emerald
City |
 Life
and Death of an American Fourtracker
John
Vanderslice is a weird guy. Helming the now defunct San Francisco
band MK Ultra, he got the recording
bug and opened his own studio, Tiny Telephone. With each solo
album he delves deeper and deeper into the recording process,
experimenting with different techniques, sounds, instruments
and equipment. His latest manages to pull together his new found
obsession with his great sense of pop sensibility to create
a pretty cohesive album filled with moody, cool sounding music
that is pure Vanderslice. His writing style is one part pretentious
NoCal poet and one part pining high school senior with a dying
ballpoint. His voice is hard to describe, other than calling
it a bit on the high, nerdy side. He's also been listening to
a lot of Beulah and Neutral
Milk Hotel lately, mixing together horns, fuzz guitar and
even a bag of loose change. Listening to his albums always leaves
me a bit sad (even pensive), but they sound amazing, and really
don't remind me of much else out there. |
 Mass
Suicide Occult Figurines |
 MGM
Endings: Cellar Door Remixes
|
 Pixel
Revolt |
 Romanian
Names
|
 Time
Travel Is Lonely
Vanderslice is a hard sell for some folks.
He's this kind of mad production genius who tweaks and tweaks
his emo chamber pop to within an inch of its life, howling these
arcane lyrics over handclaps and side percussion and acoustic
guitar and sound effects and even horns. And add in on this
one a concept album about sea faring and some other esoteric
shit that only lives on this and maybe some Elf
Power or Decemberists
albums. No doubt he's the thinking man's cardigan sweater guy.
There is a certain maudlin quality to everything this guy does,
but it's his stories of child death and many many songs about
youth lost and traumatic relationships all set to his affected
caterwaul that makes me somehow happy in a strange way. This is probably
my favorite album of his, as it feels cohesive and leaves out
some of the more experimental studio things he gets into in
his later albums. The title track is one of the better in his
whole repertoire and there are many others that weave his stories
of political maleficence, historical inaccuracies and just straight
up fiction that make every turn of phrase and new listen ever
more interesting and cool. |
Musical Connections:
MK Ultra
|
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