MUSIC - Chad VanGaalen - Skelliconnection

Label: Flemish Eye (Sub Pop)

Score: 7.7 (adjusted from 7.9 - hindsight's 20/20)

After seeing Chad VanGaalen open for Leslie Feist, I promptly purchased both of his full-length albums, 2004's Infiniheart, and this one, released in 2006. Of the two this is probably the better record, slightly more varied, and playing much more to VanGaalen's strengths.

The album begins with an ode to radio-rock fiends everywhere in the form of "Flower Gardens", a song which, volume aside, begins to shape the entire record. The melodies present on this, and all the other tracks are fairly plain, solid attempts at each of the intended musical niches the singer-songwriter inherently plays on. With rare exceptions, those melodies carry the album, song by song, with relatively little overlapping material from one iteration to the next (except perhaps VanGaalen's love of dogs) - a fact which is neither a great hindrance nor a great boon, as the songs each provide their own stage and perform admirably on it. Songs such as "Wing Finger" and "Wind Driving Dogs" prove (as if it needed to be proven yet again) that yes, the blues are the greatest vehicle for simple, catchy songs that will get your toes tapping. These tracks, along with "Graveyard" and "Sing Me 2 Sleep" showcase VanGaalen's strongest point anywhere along the way: the ability to craft a riff which will provide the backbone to a song.

However, inevitably such simplicity becomes a bit ponderous, and at certain points this does drag the album down, though never to the point where you feel the intense need to skip over a track in order to avoid falling asleep at the wheel. Nor is it a sign that, as a musician, he is incapable of providing the extra touches that can turn a song into a great piece. These flourishes don't arrive often, but when they do, such as the late acoustic guitar entry on "Burn 2 Ash" which nicely compliments the basic melody, they're tasteful, restrained, and don't dare get in the way of the beat. As well, his light use of electronica is well weighted in a post-Kid A and dance-punk world, augmenting the guitar money-maker. The same goes for the woodwinds, which add a nice sentimental flavour to "Wing Finger" and "Sing Me 2 Sleep", again never intruding, always ready to play second base and let the strings play short-stop.

All this adds up to some fairly innocuous but well-conceived music, which then promptly runs into VanGaalen's lyrics. The guy is funny, I think most people would give him that (especially those of us who have heard his song about "making movies"), and his lyrics fluctuate between sentimental and that uniquely comedic brand of weird. One may call him Calgary's 40-year-and-one-major-worldview-change-late answer to Bob Dylan, and they wouldn't be too far off actually. At any given time though, those simple melodies start running into sentence structures that just won't accommodate the 12-bar setup he's got ready for them. The result is a sometimes awkward delivery, or lyrics that will simply jump out at you from the relative calm of the music. Again it's not a massive failing the record can't get over, it's just a little oft-putting for the uninitiated. The same (roughly) goes for VanGaalen's vocals, which take about 30 seconds to adjust to, but then feel right at home alongside everything else. In fact, his ability to go from strange to pleading to maddening in both vocal and lyrical content are probably the best features of the CD that will go unnoticed until you sit back and think about them.

And the CD as a whole definitely has a progression, from the hard rocking beginning, to the lullaby of "Sing Me 2 Sleep" at the end, though it must be stated the low and mid-tempo tracks receive the bulk of attention and craft. They are the lucky ones with those extra touches mentioned, and they benefit greatly, which is not to say that the up-tempo tracks are weak, they aren't, they just lack the extra effort and thought that the quieter numbers naturally call out for. The few instrumentals included are actually decent as well (I'm not a fan of most rock-based instrumentals, so you know), again, not really detracting or enhancing the album as a whole, though they do give the other synth entries a bit of an easier ride since the listener's ears are already prepared for them.

So on the whole the album is quite good. Not great perhaps, but definitely solid at every turn. It rarely lifts you up to the stratosphere of emotion or intellectual "holy-crapness" that the singer-songwriter can potentially provide (see Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Blonde on Blonde for that), but it never really throws you to the dirt and pukes in your ears either (like the inevitable post-Oasis Liam Gallagher album will undoubtedly do). So go and support your struggling Canadian artists and buy a copy, will ya?

P.S. Thanks to Pitchfork for the image of the CD. I need an image-editor bad.