May. 11, 2011 - Issue #812: Food
Diaper Island
Chad Vangaalen {recordings_bands_mg} Diaper Island {/recordings_bands_mg}
Flemish Eye, 2011
3
Chad VanGaalen's music has always possessed the strange-genius qualities of outsider art: not just in approach (albums recorded in basement studios, building his own instruments to play, drawing his own surreal animated music videos and album art), but in concept and sound, too. Musically, VanGaalen's albums share moments of childlike simplicity and beauty with stoner-nightmare imagery and paranoid gazes cast to the world around him. But at his very best, VanGaalen achieves a skewed brilliance, totally unique and irreplicable by anyone else.That singular approach has cultivated acclaim and audience—2007's Skelliconnection and 2008's Soft Airplane were both shortlisted for the Polaris Prize—and with those, VanGaalen seemed to be growing more confident, adding bigger production and poppier sounds to each successive album, which is perhaps why Diaper Island seems like such a deviation, more akin to an unpolished demo than proper release: it finds VanGaalen pulling back from the bigger, bolder production of his most recent output, returning to the stripped-down basement psychedelia he vaulted into public conscioussness with on 2004's Infiniheart, but replacing the dreamy naivety that graced that album with a looming sense of world-weariness, a disconnect with the world around him, spiritually and sonically. Even the instrumentation seems less varied. It's the sounds of an introvert looking further inward than he ever has before, his private thoughts on the world-at-large.
Opener "Do Not Fear" sets the colour palette to be used: over droning electric guitar strums, he cries, "Don't waste my time, she said / And do not fear," with a mix of hope and heavy sigh. A lot here looks at the disconnect between people or within their inner and outer lives. "Peace on the Rise" is a sing-song lament to "Slip into the same old dream every night / Think of all the things that could've been," while "Heavy Stones" seems like a barstool confession, an acoustic and harmonica lament. "I can't remember your name," VanGaalen sings. "I can't remember anything."
If the opening salvo feels a little one note, Diaper Island picks up with "Sara," the first track to break the mood and mould. It feature's the album's most beautiful chorus—"Sara / Wake me up when you're home," and drifts like a soft cloud over raindrop guitar notes—and after that, it's an eclectic grab-bag of strange curio pop and odd, rough-edged gems: "By Design" enters full-steam guitar rocker territory; "Freedom for a Poilceman" has VanGaalen letting out a Braveheart-worthy scream for a chorus; "Can You Believe It" mashes white-noise guitars into digital blips underneath a refrain of the title; "Shave My Pussy" ends the album on its strangest note, pairing a lullaby guitar line to some really unhinged lyrics—"Maybe if I shave my pussy, then you love me? / Baby, will you love me? / I'm really feeling ugly," for starters.
It's far from his most accessible work, but Diaper Island's frayed-at-the-edges feel is engrossing, if only for a strange, voyeuristic feeling of hearing someone's most private thoughts set to melody. As its title seems to suggest, Diaper Island is an isolated place (of mind, at least) for VanGaalen to deal with his shit. Be glad he pressed record while he did it.
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