Dave's Chad VanGaalen Review

This album is a journey (all albums are a journey idiot) but this album feels as if it’s taking you somewhere special. Like Alice chasing the rabbit into the hole, listeners are enticed to follow Chad VanGaalen into the album song by song – and with each dity the journey becomes a little more bizarre and a lot more satisfying.

It’s obvious each song plays its role perfectly contributing to the larger meaning and themes of the album. That theme, by the way is death. But not the kind of death that makes us uncomfortable, but the kind of death that makes us seeks answers within ourselves to the life beyond and our experience in this time. Which is why when listening to “Soft Airplane” you’ll find yourself drifting off into the imagery created by Chad’s lyrics (“I can hear the cries of the dead/Maybe its your Neighbor/Beating his dog in the basement”) to suddenly be snapped back by the unique textures created by non-traditional instruments and arrangements.

That juxtaposition is the key to this album’s ability to act as escapism into Chad VanGaalen’s world. It’s an adventure of the undiscovered. While exploring the infinite and unanswerable questions of death there seems to be a childlike innocence in VanGaalen’s method. It feel like he’s experimenting in the recording process rather than meticulously arranging in the writing process - but it works, simply because he’s trying it. Like when a small child finger-paints, or uses Play-Doh, it becomes instantly endearing because of the method. That is where the charm of “Soft Airplane” lies.

Chad VanGaalen has delivered a great record, as one of my fellow reviewers pointed out, there isn’t a bad song on “Soft Airplane”, however unlike Ryan, I feel the album has more cohesion and unity to it. Intentional or not is irrelevant, because for me, it’s part of the entire package, it’s the journey of “Soft Airplane” as a work of commercial art.

The one thing that Chad VanGaalen’s “Soft Airplane” has working against it, is that upon listening to the album several times, the novelty of these songs almost becomes predictable. For the listener it’s like a drug – they keep listening hoping to find that same magic they heard the first 5 or 7 listens – but it’s not going to happen, it’s never as good as the first time. “Soft Airplane” is the kind of album that is best is small doses, it reminds you how special it really can be that way.

There is no doubt that Chad VanGaalen’s career will be a wonder to watch in the coming years. His sheer talent will take his art places that will (hopefully) satisfy him, and along the way, he’ll have people follow him on the journey – just like Alice and followed the rabbit down the hole.

Gary's Chad VanGaalen Review

Ladies and gentlemen - lay back, relax and allow Chad VanGaalen to take you on a trip. Or, perhaps more aptly put, a journey through time and space. A musical journey that's both beautiful and melancholic, stretching back through time. You'll hear the familiar madness of 60s style psychedelia then rocket forward and experience the futuristic sounds and blissed out space-pop the Calgary native can so delicately create.

Soft Airplane, VanGaalen's third full length release, is a near expertly-crafted album that pulls from all over the musical spectrum. From the onset I was instantly imagining VanGaalen as the perfect mash-up between Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens (many an indie fan's wet dream). But before you can tag him with a label, he's changed it up. The sheer fact he can pull off these varied sounds and influences is an achievement in itself, but the really impressive part is the way he deftly switches gears and never misses a step. At any point this album could have devolved into a messy, hodge-podge of VanGaalen's musical crushes. But somehow he makes the experience cohesive and unified, like a story unfurling before you. And as the attentive listener you try your best to anticipate what comes next, but chances are he'll leave you guessing. A hundred little nuances are peppered through the album from oboes to xylophones to harmonicas and you'll be pleasantly surprised by them all.

I mentioned the journey would be melancholic and it is. Death and hardship crop up all over the album and you wonder if perhaps VanGaalen is carrying more than a few ghosts around with him. He's more than happy to bear his soul to you and at times the music feels so small and intimate you're sure he's telling you a secret. Then suddenly the next song is so distant and soaked in reverb it's as if he's broadcasting from some lonely, distant planet - that perhaps we're hearing the haunting echo of a musician who dissolved along with the stars.

It's so apt that the album - and your journey - should come to a close with the sounds of a train disappearing into the distance (Rabid Bits of Time). The destination was never the point on this trip, but all the stops along the way. And yes - technically there is one more track that truly closes out the album. The skull-shaking noise rock of Frozen Energon is an indulgent little extra like the cherry to a sundae that instantly brings to mind The Velvet Underground.

I hope you enjoyed your trip.

Ryan's Chad VanGaalen review

A comparison I've often heard is that great albums are like great novels – they tell a cohesive story with recurring thematic elements and motifs, and have one overall message that the artist is trying to communicate. No doubt this is often true, but what a lot of music fans tend to overlook is that it's not exclusively true, there are some great albums that are more like short story collections, where a bunch of very different songs are put together with no connection other than the artist creating them. The Beatles' white album and REM's Out of Time are great examples of the latter, and Chad VanGaalen's Soft Airplane is another good example.

As with any short story collection, you really have to consider each song on its individual merits. This can be both a blessing and a curse – if the songs are good, it makes the whole thing seem that much better, but it's harder to justify bad songs than it would be with a more concept-type album. Luckily, with this one, there aren't really any bad songs on here; they range from excellent (Bare Feet on Wet Griptape, City of Electric Light) to at its worst only fairly good (Frozen Energon, Phantom Anthills). Even those “weaker” songs on the album can only be described as such in relation to the other songs on the album – compared to most songs that appear on most albums released, they're still fairly strong tunes.

If I had one quibble with the album, it's that VanGaalen tends to wear his influences on his sleeve – most of the songs tended to remind me of songs by other artists, but done in a way that is evocative, rather than derivative. There's quite a range of those influences, as well; I heard strains of everything from Dylan, to Gord Downie's solo work, to Nine Inch Nails, to Edwyn Collins' modern classic Girl Like You. VanGaalen's clearly someone with a great love of music, and it shows throughout the album.

Chad VanGaalen's eventually going to build up a huge, 'mainstream success' name for himself, at some point in the future if not with this album. Maybe it'll come after appearing on the soundtrack of a popular indie film, a la Kimya Dawson on Juno, so you might as well check him out now, so you can tell your friends that you've been listening to him for years. The fact that you'll get to listen to some great tunes at the same time doesn't hurt at all, either.

Album #3 - Chad VanGaalen

Artist: Chad VanGaalen

Album: Soft Airplane

From: Calgary, Alberta

Dave's Elliott Brood Review

Mountain Meadows. The words conjure up images of green pastures littered with wild flowers bathed in sunlight and white rabbits hop through the grass blissfully. Listening to Mountain Meadows the Polaris Prize short listed album from Elliott Brood it’s obvious that in their version of Mountain Meadows those lush hill tops have been clouded over with a violent storm – refreshing and welcome by it’s sheer presence but dark and volatile by nature.

Elliott Brood will one day win a Polaris Prize, but I feel this year is not their year. This year they are the band that is too strong to ignore; with an album that is consistently good from top to bottom. Thematically it’s strong, and production (maybe it’s strongest area) is magical at points, the album has moments where your mind will escape into it, but I found myself always losing a connection at some point for some reason.

Where Elliot Brood succeeds is not allowing their music and songwriting to have limits. Any band that banjo picks usually succumb to the “bluegrass” label instantly, but not Elliot Brood. You hesitate to label them a bluegrass band or a country band or even a rock band, when you hear this album it’s just good music – and good music is limitless.

Ryan's Elliott Brood Review

Before jumping into this week's review, I need to make a confession: I am not, generally speaking, a fan of country music. There are a few artists working in the genre that I can appreciate, primarily on the bluegrass side of things, but for the most part it's just not my preference. So, as all the prior knowledge I had of Elliott Brood's Mountain Meadows was that it's a country album, I was a little hesitant to give it a listen. What I ended up finding, though, were a couple of things that surprised me about the album.

What I really wasn't expecting was how much this album would remind me of a punk album. I first got that feeling listening to Brood's raspy singingg voice, which at times reminded me of Tim Armstrong or The Distillers' Brody Dalle. The more I thought about it, though, the deeper that connection became; you've got an album driven by energetic, fast-paced guitar rhythms, relatively simple-sounding chord progressions, and an independent, DYI attitude. True, it's completely devoid of any of the outward trappings and cultural detritus usually associated with punk music, but the heart of it is the same.

Another enjoyable surprise while listening to this album was how much capital-F Fun it is to listen to. It's a rhythmic, melodious album, and there were a few times that I caught myself tapping my feet along to the beat, especially on tracks like 'Write It All Down For You' and 'Chuckwagon'. When evaluating an album, people usually try to think about more serious concerns than that, but it's an important consideration to keep in mind.

Now, while I did enjoy those elements of the disc, Mountain Meadows is far from a perfect album. There's not a lot of variety from song to song, and as a result they tend to muddle together. Some might say that that's further evidence of the punk influences on the album, but nevertheless I think that it's a mark against the album. There's also nothing really profound about the lyrics found throughout it; again, they're fun enough, but on the whole there wasn't anything there that I found particularly remarkable. On the whole, I'd have to say that sums up my overall feeling about the album - while it's pleasantly surprising at times, and fun to listen to, it doesn't stick with you the way a great album should.

Gary's Elliott Brood Review

Elliott Brood strikes me as a band that would be right at home in an episode of the HBO show Deadwood. If nothing else, they'd at least supply a capable soundtrack. All the touch-points are there - country-punk sensibility with a sprinkling of rockabilly. The sing-songy campfire ditties and crooning ballads. With almost no familiarity of the band other than these 13 songs, I have no trouble picturing them on stage in a saloon while men play poker and hookers saunter from table to table. Where some bands strive for that polished sound and smooth harmonies (Bedouin Soundclash, I'm looking at you), Elliott Brood is all sharp edges and weather-beaten roughness - the songs strewn about the record like the windblown prairies they evoke.

It's clear that the ghost of Tom Waits (were he dead) hovers throughout this album, pulling strings like a demented puppet-master, but Elliott Brood can never quite match him for sheer lunacy and darkness. Instead they're happy to live on the sunnier side of things with bright sounding acoustic guitars, banjo's and lots of marching snare drum.

Kicking off with the steam-train rumble of Fingers and Tongues, the album pulls you right through the dust-bowl, powering westward in search of something more. By the third track you're keenly aware they have little time for subtlety and refinement, opting instead for blunt force trauma with the infectious Write it All Down For You. This is Elliott Brood at their best, making an acoustic guitar and ukulele sound as powerful as any Marshal stack turned to eleven. Unfortunately this is quickly followed by the rather generic Without Again - which isn't a bad song, but pushed up next to Write it All Down For You comes across as weak and ineffective.

The rest of the album is similar in vein - one bold step forward is usually followed by a sideways one. None of these songs are bad, but they didn't exactly leave me breathlessly begging for more. I'd mentioned earlier that the songs were strewn around the album, and it wasn't just flowery prose. One of the reasons Mountain Meadows doesn't quite click for me is that the album doesn't feel cohesive. At times it feels more like an out-of-control car hurtling towards a horizon that never seems to come.

Elliott Brood have definitely earned their ranks among the Polaris Prize nominees with a good album. There are tracks that hint at brilliance (like the moody and atmospheric 31 Years), and some that are just sort of middle of the road (The Valley Town) and things that sounded downright familiar (Garden River sure felt a lot like Social Distortion doing Ring of Fire). But even if that's not your cup of tea (or sasparilla) at least they'll make you feel a little lawless for 45 minutes, and that's never a bad thing.

Album #2 - Elliott Brood

Band: Elliott Brood

Album: Mountain Meadows

From: Toronto, ON.

Aaron's Hey Rosetta! Review

The folks at the Canadian Heritage Ad-Campaign Committee would have you believe that Newfoundland is a place where its inhabitants (Newfies) hang out with the ranks of peculiar Italian inventors in their spare time and develop wireless technology (you know, because they have so much time on their hands out there in Eastern nowhere). What really happens there (according to stereotypes and strict hearsay) is this commune of cod-kissing friendlies — seafaring folk who'll invite you into their small hobbit-like homes and teach you a thing or two about a 'ting or tree'. It's a province where concepts of Screech is not one found on Saved By The Bell, but consumed; where families stay up all night with mandolins and get drunk and then call themselves, Great Big Sea. It's a place devoid of all seriousness, one without order, occupations or the strains of moody indie-rock... Well, nearly all of that is true.

Hey Rosetta! a six-piece out of St. John's, NFLD are making it difficult for those eager to file them under the 'celtic-folk/rock' cliche by offering something strangely different than their postal code suggests. And although the tiny populous of their home town would usually have Tim Baker (vocals/guitar/piano) and camp following suit and producing 'ditties' - lest we forget that Eastern Canada has a rich history when it comes to all things 'indie-rock' and is probably due for a heritage commercial itself.
Haligonians, Sloan began their career as My Bloody Valentine enthusiasts and were shoegazers long before they found the Beatles; Moncton's basement dwellers, Eric's Trip were more lo-fi than Steve Malkmus's armpit hair, yet Seattle still came calling; and then there's fellow Newfoundlanders Hardship Post who created enough angsty rock that they ditched their stay at the shire and moved to Halifax to gain more attention during the Pop Explosion era. So it shouldn't come as a shock that a band like HR! should not only exist in the East Coast, but should make the Polaris shortlist for their album, Into Your Lungs (and around your heart and on through your blood).

The album creeps and meanders to life much like A Ghost is Born did for Wilco - slow and calculated with the isolated singer introducing his tale. The difference here is that instead of a listless Jeff Tweedy warning us about the affects of spousal abuse, we have singer, Baker, slightly more alert, setting up what sounds like a plan for escape: "it's time to go/what's to come only fate can show/see her move like a toreador/wielding her cloak and sword." That's not to say that HR! resembles or sounds like Wilco, but they do tread similar enigmatic waters and rootsy origins, and take severe musical turns when necessary. "New Goodbye" introduces the blueprint for Into Your Lungs, which thematically runs the gamut as far as "life experiences" are concerned, but instead of sounding preachy or philosophical about the band's current or past revelations, Baker seems to project a celebratory reaction to all that comes before him, "but often it happens you know, that things you don't trust are the ones you need most," croons Baker on the album's finale, "Psalm."

HR! mostly succeeds with their strong musical interplay and ability to shift dynamics within a song without making it seem too mathy. Lungs teeters between emotionally charged rockers like the Veils-esque, "I've Been Asleep for a Long, Long Time," to sorrowful weepers like "Open Arms" which would not sound out of place on a Win Butler solo record. (And no, it's not a Journey cover). Elsewhere we have the back-to-back offering of "Black Heart" and "Red Heart" with the latter being the standout between the two and the wistful piano ballad, "Tired Eyes" are just some of the gems that can be heard on the hour-long disc. Oh, and they don't totally alienate their brethren as there's enough fiddles and whatnot to keep them safe on Grandma's Christmas list.

If there's any one complaint it would have to be the amount of music to sift through because we all know our new shuffle-society seems to struggle with anything of grand proportions these days. There's a lot to digest here, but the good part about decent music is that it eventually finds the right hands/ears, gets heard, and thankfully the right people were listening.

Ryan's Hey Rosetta Review

I'll have to admit that it took me awhile to warm to this album. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with it on a technical level; it's clear from the first listen that this was a polished, professionally put together album, but it left me feeling cold when I first heard it. If anything, I think that it seemed somehow inauthentic; the songs I was hearing were songs of experience, and lead singer Tim Baker sounded too young and too innocent to be singing them.

After a few more listens, though, I had an epiphany: this is not an album about being experienced, even if a song like 'I've Been Asleep for a Long Long Time' might suggest that it is. Rather, it's actually an album about feeling like you've got things figured out, but then going out into the world and realizing how little you actually know, and then using that information to build a more realistic view of the world. That's a very subtle difference, and it's a mark of the band's songwriting ability that they're able to work so much into the album's themes.

If you listen to the album from front to back, you can hear a pattern start to develop throughout tit; the first couple of tracks are upbeat and slightly pop-ish, and then the album gets quieter for a bit, before coming back stronger and more assured of itself by the end. The fact that the same pattern reproduces itself on the level of individual songs, especially in 'Tired Eyes' and 'Holy Shit', leaves the listener with the impression that this is no accident, but rather something done intentionally, and it's something that resonates with that thematic experience. Overall, one gets the impression that Hey Rosetta wasn't the same band at the end of the album as they were when it began.

Lyrically, Into Your Lungs is a very strong album, but again, it is such in a very subtle way. There's aren't many individual lyrics that you can point at and say “That's a great song lyric” to show how forceful they are (with the possible exception of one line from 'A Thousand Suns' - “May every breath you breathe be built around sacred things”). Rather, it's one where Baker creates these introspective lyrical landscapes. By themselves, they would sound somewhat overly romantic, but the rest of the band fills the songs out, providing a more somatic balance to the lyrics. There are plenty of great hooks and riffs throughout the album, but they're all there in a way that serves the lyrical content, rather than trying to overpower it. That balance reminded me of Counting Crows' early material, although it also fits in quite well with a lot of the greats of the Canadian indie scene, like Sloan or the Weakerthans.

If anything, the subtlety that the album displays might hurt it with some audiences, as a casual listen won't necessarily bring out all the textures of the band's sound. Put on some headphones, though, find some time to listen to the whole album beginning to end, and you won't be disappointed.

Gary's Hey Rosetta! Review

Listening to the opening track of Into Your Lungs, you can picture lead singer Tim Baker standing in front of you quietly strumming a guitar and warbling the opening lines to New Goodbye. You lean forward in your seat, straining to hear his near whisper and think - Oh good, another acoustic singer/songwriter. But that's his plan, because before you know it you've been descended upon from all sides by the rest of Hey Rosetta!, in a tempest of guitars, strings, harmonies and other controlled chaos. It builds to a hair-raising frenzy before ending in a wall of fuzz and white noise. And that's just the first song.

For anyone who's heard the soundtrack to the movie Once or the band Swell Season, you'll recognize some familiar dynamics, including the ability to crank up the emotion to near heart breaking levels. Baker can go from 0-60 on that scale pretty fast, and does so frequently. In fact you might even argue that the intensity gets jacked up so often on this album (a healthy 60 minutes) that it's almost exhausting. The whisper to a scream velocity is so fast and frequent you may feel like you have emotional whiplash. But it's a cost worth paying when you know the people behind them music mean every word of it.

There's an art and meticulous craft that's gone into the album but not on a pretentious Arcade Fire-level. That said, there are moments when things get a bit "jammy" and the band seems really impressed with itself. These are fleeting moments, but I did find myself thinking - get on with it already - more than once.

Into Your Lungs has a sense of familiarity too, or as my wife succinctly put it: "I feel like these all sound like other songs." This isn't exactly a slight against Hey Rosetta!, but more a testament to how quickly they'll make you feel at home with the material. And why not - there's a lot to love on Into Your Lungs. It's powerful and weighty (Black Heart), it has grand, stomping sing-a-longs (Tired Eyes) and some really well executed 90's style rock (There's an Arc, A Thousand Suns).

It's refreshing to hear bands that have clearly taken time and effort to craft an album from start to finish and not just a collection of tenuously related songs. Hey Rosetta! have seemingly appeared out of nowhere for me, and to echo something Dave said, I'm not sure why. They have all the markings of a band I'd fawn over and yet Polaris is the first time I've heard of them. I hope that changes for them, because this is the kind of band that gets me excited for a Canadian music renaissance. Something akin to the mid-to-late 90s when bands like Local Rabbits, Eric's Trip, Thrush Hermit, Change of Heart et al, were establishing a pretty high bench mark. It's pretty clear what Hey Rosetta! grew up listening to, and by the sounds of things they studied well.

Deedle's Hey Rosetta! Review

Burn Baby Burn!

Let’s Paint A Picture:

A woodstove in the middle of log cabin, the fire’s embers glow. A slow breeze from above stokes the fire just enough and the littlest flame is started. Kindling is slowly added to the bed of embers as the flames grow bigger and bigger. Without warning a full log is tossed onto our healthy fire, and in no time we have a roaring glow a blaze. The fire fills the room with warmth and excitement. If this was a movie, we’d pull back to reveal a band jamming around this wood stove – that band would be Hey Rosetta!

“Into Your Lungs” the bands Polaris short listed album has the feel of a rustic rock record, one that may actually have been created around a wood burning stove. From the album opener “New Goodbye” the songs start slow and build to a crescendo that is generally worth the wait to get to. For Hey Rosetta! the journey through the song, from top to bottom is what matters – there is not a lot of “radio hooks” on this album – and they deliver through arrangement.

Unique arrangements with piano, various guitars, what appear to sound like woodwind instruments and strings (don’t quote me but I may have heard brass in there as well), and all seem simple, but at the same time refreshing, it’s these layers within the songs that build and maintain the rustic atmosphere from top to bottom of the album.

What strikes me the most about this album is I imagine it being played and shared live more so than being listened to a lot. I’ve never seen Hey Rosetta! play live, but I can imagine they take these songs and force you into them when standing in the same room as them.

This is the part of the review where I compare it to something else you may be familiar with. To bring it back to the woodstove/roaring fire motif – the glow of the fire casts shadows on the walls; shadows that resemble Hawksley Workman’s “Lover/Fighter” album and The Weakerthans “The Reasons”. Fellow Canadian company that isn’t too bad to keep.

It surprised me how much I liked this album, but how much it has gone relatively undiscovered in circles I roll in. I don’t know who that says more about. Hopefully we’ll all be saying more about Hey Rosetta! because there is no doubt this disc will get “Into Your Lungs”, and circulate through your system. (Thanks for obliging the word play, I waited the whole review but decided I couldn’t resist)

deedle

Album #1 - Hey Rosetta

Band: Hey Rosetta!

Album: Into Your Lungs (and around in your heart and on through your blood)

From: St. Johns, Newfoundland

Current Shortlist and Previous Winners

Previous winners of the Polaris music award are:

2006 - Final Fantasy, He Poos Clouds
2007 - Patrick Watson, Close to Paradise
2008 - Caribou, Andorra

The Polaris shortlist for 2009 was announced on July 7, 2009. The shortlist was decided on from a 40-album longlist:

Hey Rosetta, Into Your Lungs (and around in your heart and on through your blood)
Elliott Brood, Mountain Meadows
Chad VanGaalen, Soft Airplane
Fucked Up, The Chemistry of Modern Life
Malajube, Labyrinthes
K'Naan, Troubadour
Joel Plaskett, Three
Great Lake Swimmers, Lost Channels
Metric, Fantasies
Patrick Watson, Wooden Arms

Some History

"The Polaris Music Prize is a music award annually given to the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label. The award was established in 2006 and includes a C$20,000 cash prize." - from Wikipedia.

The Polaris Music Prize is a juried prize that seeks to provide an award for Canadian music that focuses entirely on musical quality, rather than being determined by sales or music label connections.

Polaris jurors select the five albums by Canadian artists that they feel best meet the award criteria; from those, a long list of forty albums is compiled. From that long list, jurors are then asked to select five albums from the long list that they feel best meet the award criteria. The ten most popular choices from the long list comprise the short list. A Grand Jury of 11 individuals then vote to choose the Polaris winner, who will be announced on September 21 at the Masonic Temple in Toronto.