Has anyone noticed how much of a wordsmith John
Vanderslice has become since he started hanging out
with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats? And have
you noticed how intricate and layered the production
of Darnielle's records has become ever since he
started spending more time with Vanderslice? JV is a
budding poet these days, and JD's albums have become
full of musical life, and it seems they have each
other to thank.
Pixel Revolt furthers the Johns' joint enterprise,
with Darnielle acting at various times as "editor,
co-writer, and midwife" for the record, according to
the press notes. And yet, as with all good editors,
his influence is very subtly felt. It's Vanderslice's
voice that's front and center here (while, conversely,
the last couple Mountain Goats records have felt at
times too Vanderslicey for their own good). His lyrics
on Pixel Revolt, as on his last two solo albums, are
ambitious. Sometimes to a fault — there are passages of
words that obscure the intricate instrumentation
beneath, in the same way that Vanderslice's meticulous
and often breathtaking production can fight with his
singing for listeners' ears. It's a matter of balance,
and Vanderslice does usually keep his two
talents working with, not against, each other.
The results are less collusive on Pixel Revolt, but
somehow the album's strengths manage to render
the songs' tonal and structural disparities quite unimportant; as the
final seconds of the album tick by, you're left with a feeling of melancholy,
humor, and not a small amount of dread. The album began
as a response to the present U.S. administration and, more
specifically, the ongoing war in Iraq. There's a
gravity to Vanderslice's stories, an
authoritative voice and a sensitivity to their
characters, that elevates them above pop songs.
In "Plymouth Rock," a young soldier, "made up like a
Shawnee brave," jumps out of a truck for his first
nighttime raid, only to have "white bullets [tear
through his neck]," while in "Trance Manual," an
American reporter visits an Iraqi prostitute. "I'll
have my editors arrange for payment," he tells her,
and there's a desperate and resigned sadness in the
statement.
"Exodus Damage," which takes its title from a line in
the Silver Jews' "Black and Brown Blues" ("Red and
white exit light/ That's exodus damage"), is a
freaked-out meditation on the circumstances
surrounding 9/11, its narrator questioning why "an
hour went by without a fighter in the sky." By this
point, the album is shaping up to be a rather serious
and relatively coherent musical statement, which is a
pretty exciting thing indeed considering that the
indie-rock community/scene has yet to issue a really
declaratory piece of work outside of Conor Oberst's
vaguely juvenile (yet still rousing) anti-war anthems.
Vanderslice, who had confronted the war on Cellar
Door, his previous record, seems to have come into
his own as someone able to effectively organize
political thoughts into an album-length statement.
And then the record makes a sharp left and never turns
back. Vanderslice's need to write in reaction to the
political climate apparently evaporated following a
particularly bad breakup sustained mid-recording; the
album at this point becomes just that, a breakup
record — something we can certainly relate to more
personally than getting shot in a midnight raid in
Iraq, but somehow lacking the excitement and promise
the first half of the album delivered. Pixel Revolt
feels, at the end, like two EPs packaged together and
passed off as a full-length. The justification could
be made that the fierce, angry and frustrated
responses to international armed conflict and
girlfriends leaving are very much the same, though
that would seem to be kind of a stretch.
Beyond the divide, the songs are weaker, more
scattered. "Angela" uses a runaway bunny as the
starting-off point for a discussion between two lovers
of moving out of the San Fernando Valley.
"Continuation" concerns four detectives on the trail
of a killer, and even the neat combination of
xylophone and synth backing up the narrative doesn't
keep the song from seeming like a superfluous,
ill-advised sidestep.
Not all is lost, though, on this second half of Pixel
Revolt. "Dear Sarah Shu" is the perfect example of
how sublime things can be when Vanderslice gets all
his plates spinning simultaneously, at top speeds. A
precise, elliptical recap of how strong feelings can
disintegrate into weird indigestible particles, the
song's message that "in the end, it's love that you'll
have to learn to survive" is propelled by a quick,
light drumbeat and consistent moans and laughs from a
cello that never presses forward to the front.
"Dear Sarah Shu" illustrates how Vanderslice can, if
everything is properly aligned, create an
anti-wall-of-sound, in which uncountable instruments
and unknowable noises combine to form not an
impenetrable veil of sounds, but a curtain of beads in
which everything is visible, everything is singularly
audible, and there's enough space for the lyrics to
breathe. At its best, Pixel Revolt applies that
theory to politics, heartbreak, loss, and the
regaining of hope; there are moments on the album that
reflect a talent so unique that you wonder if
Vanderslice ever really needed John Darnielle's help
or David Berman's song titles in the first place.
Probably — but it's clear that the album further
defines the singular voice Vanderslice has been
crafting for himself for the last five years. |
