About John Vanderslice: Though I saw him open for Spoon two years ago and was suitably impressed, I had never really listened to him until I bought his new album, Cellar Door. Maybe it�s the English geek in me, but I�m always on the lookout for really interesting lyricists. I think this is primarily what drew me to bands like Grandaddy, the Loud Family. These bands use big vocabularies and employ lots of wordplay to an effect that is always thought-provoking, often humorous, and never pretentious. John Vanderslice uses unusal lyrics to tell vivid, three-minute anecdotes, and on Cellar Door they are rarely cheerful ones. The protagonist of the album�s second song, �Up Above The Sea�, can�t figure out if the bluebird in his backyard is a messenger of peace or doom, so he buys a rifle and kills it. �When It Hits My Blood� is a retelling of Requiem For A Dream that�s so faithful to the plot it can�t possibly be a coincidence. The narrator of �They Won�t Let Me Run� resigns himself to a boring life in a small town after he gets his girlfriend pregnant: �The day I fell in love / of course we fucked around / in the morning she threw up / my options were all laid out.� Then there�s �Heated Pool And Bar�, a song that is musically bouyant, perhaps even joyous, except that it�s about a guard who tortures prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and seems content in his work. �I bring the prisoners in / the hoods come off and torture slowly begins / the screams aren�t overheard / it�d fuck up the weaker men / but I�m cold, I�m so untouchable.� You catch yourself bobbing your head to this song until you start paying attention to the lyrics. That�s true of most of the songs, actually: it�s like Vanderslice realized he has a knack for catchy pop songs, but decided to spike them with dismal, often disturbing imagery. This is not music to listen to on the way to work, if you want to have a good day. This is music to listen to while you�re at work, if you want to remind yourself that it could be worse. And I must stress that, musically, it sounds beautiful. According to Pitchfork, Vanderslice gets closer with each album to making �the earth-shattering album [he�s] been almost-making for the last four years.� They say he�s not there yet (this is Pitchfork, after all) but he sounds pretty damn close.

PS. Today I overheard an attorney in a very heated phone debate actually use the phrase "do the math".

3 Comments

Back & Forth