Canada is a land renowned by Americans for its affordable health care, oddly clothed policemen, and countless musk oxen… but what about its music?
Although America’s wandering youth has never touted Canada as a fashionable spring break destination, they have, at least in regard to music, unjustly bestowed upon our neglected neighbor to the north the suggestive slogan commonly associated with such raucous conventions. Sadly, fueled by attitudes blended equally from feelings of absurd patriotism and traditional apathy, we’ve generally decided that what happens in Canada stays in Canada. And while there have been variable exceptions in the past, (IE our adoption of Joni, Neil, and Leonard, whose songs we’ve selfishly come to call ex-patriot American poems fashioned by cultural contrast,) our embargo of Kanook-ish musical delights is blatantly intact and persistent, as evident when one observes the variance between the domestic and the foreign acclaim received by artist like Ron Sexsmith, K-Os and The Weakerthans. Somehow, while even cloistered New York and divided California continually look ridiculously and desperately to one another for the next big thing, they both manage to overlook the productivity of that next big thing that looms above them and sits drastically closer than their cross-continent focuses.
This is not to say that Canada has nothing to offer musically. In recent years, the independent music scene has been blessed with significant contributions from the increasingly vocal and ever-pioneering north that now refuses to sit idle and ignored. However, these bands that do eventually find an American following, do so only after a tremendous amount of promotion and touring in the States, ultimately shedding their citizenship in essence, making a name for themselves not as Canadian musicians, but rather as American musicians who once called Canada home. Knowing that any initial southern appreciation garnered from northern glances is traditionally reserved for inexpensive prescription drugs and humorous accents, Canadian bands have long been forced to do all the work; always delivering our orders, never staying stationed in their insulated studios waiting for us to pick up their goods.
But, Oh Canada, fear not, for change is coming in the cold air, as there are certain things that even patented laziness, self-absorbed delusions of global domination, and unparalleled jingoism can not repress or repel, and among them is man’s eventual need for quality music. So, brace yourself, reinforce the line partitions in your border-bordering duty-free shops, polish the ‘now-entering’ signs at your ill-guarded customs checkpoints, and prepare for an influx of Yankee visitors who will soon break tradition and travel northward to embrace Chad VanGaalen’s un-embargo-able Infiniheart.
It’s hard to ignore his story, harder still his music. Compiled from years of bedroom recordings, Infiniheart is a self-produced greatest hits/debut album engineered by a hit-less, multi-tasking musician with a flare for creatively simple and simply inventive arrangement. Before signing with Sub-Pop, (and not fittingly with Secretly Canadian,) Chad was known to record prolifically on a four-track recorder, and eventually a laptop, while playing multiple instruments, some of which he even fashioned himself. Once satisfied with his work, he’d then peddled these self-pressed recordings on the cold streets of Montgomery, Calgary, where his reputation grew with his recognized commitment and finally catapulted him out of the trappings of Canada.
Now, out of the bi-level, compiled and packaged nicely, VanGaalen’s recordings haven’t lost their homemade charm. In the geography of this bedroom quasi-demo, the lyrics can still almost be seen on bedside notepads whose lines capture just-woken words scribed feverishly under the dull light of midnight in efforts to articulate and preserve paranoid nightmares. His approach to production is expressed On Build a Home Like a Bee, where Chad whispers I’m sitting across from you/ don’t blur out with underground effects. Throughout the album, he seems to take his own advice and continuously lets his words fall naturally over honest and self-actualized arrangements that, due to their humble origins, sound particularly tight; reflective of a producer who fully utilized his minimal assets, while never attempting to overcompensate for such elementary tackle by drowning the record in absurd clatter and lo-fi/basement-noise.
The album’s lone flaw is in regard to its projected reception, as, for a fairly steady-formed album, it’s cursed with initial eclecticism. Unfortunately, anxious and over-saturated listeners are notorious for sampling thirty second excerpts from a record’s first three tracks and making imprudent assumptions about the disc. If sampled in such a manner, Infiniheart would waver wildly with discord reminiscent of bad soundtracks and random mixtape compilations. Clinically Dead, A lo-fi/power-pop track opens the album, with soft, phone-line vocals that sounds distant but never phoned in as they bounce over a metered beat, while After the After Life follows in a much different fashion, though one more consistent with that which is to come. This sweeping, folky number would be aptly titled Northern Man, as it offers listeners a first glimpse at Chad’s resemblance to his unintended vocal inspiration, and fellow-Canadian, Neil Young. J.C.’s Head on a Cross bops nicely in line, though not fittingly as it spins with an electric ambient-eastern beat that’s destined to leave casual listeners confusedly dancing as they move on to more steady and welcoming efforts. As the pleasant taste of variety heightens, lingering is an aftertaste that reminds you of previous wide-ranging, many-styled albums; those that never drew firm backings, as their something-for-everyone approach failed to attract the appreciation or money of patrons seeking a safe, everything-for-someone investment. Chad addresses this afflicting artist-and-listener communal A.D.D. on The Warp Zone/Hidden Bridge, noting sometimes the radio plays to no one/ sometimes the radio plays to everyone at once.
Eventually patience pays off, as after his all-over-the-maple-leaf-map dabblings; detours that appear to have been intentionally roving to weed out undedicated listeners, Chad settles his chamber-set opus into the deep and comfortable groove that you’d expect one to find in the calm of their bedroom. Defined by smart, layered Pixie-esque atmospheres, the tracks at the album’s settled heart waft weightlessly even when topped with VanGaalen’s veiled personal vocabulary and playful lyrical sci-fi sprees. The zest of his anti-hero, tone-tweaking vocals compliment this recipe nicely, as atop each tune’s space and each term’s sense, his tenderly-peaked, shallowly-nasal voice snores melodiously like Neil Young’s would, had Crosby, Still, and Nash successfully convinced him to lose his bushy-side-burned, pre-grunge stubbornness and wholly embrace the group’s time-tested commitment to seemingly testicle-less folk-rock harmony. On Echo Train, such vocals hitch a sky-bound journey with soft drums and demonstrate VanGaalen’s ability to let his music drive while his voice enjoys the ride. As 1000 Pound Eyelids illustrates his voice’s capacity to become a regretful storytelling tool, I Miss You Like I Miss You plays finely and allows it to whistle nearly absent yet honey-charmed, blurring standards and surpassing expectations and comparisons. Along with his voice, Chad’s lyrics manage to grow as well, becoming more approachable and artistic as the album deepens, and by the 16th and final track, you’re forced to lose your hindering patriotism and your inflexible fear of cold winters and Kanooks, and firmly embrace the honesty of both Canadian music and home-recordings.
Though patched together from a multitude of tapes, with fine production and lyrics, Infiniheart leaves as it had arrived; beautifully, holding an impossible suggestion of purposeful and designed organization.
Let Chad VanGaalen’s amateur recordings be proof that if it miraculously assumes uncharacteristic patience, America can learn that there’s more to be gained from Canada than discounted Celebrex and uncontested support in their personal-interest wars. Americans can look north to find that there’s music to be found in Canada; music worthy of a trip; music too promising to wait on. If such a lesson is learned, in addition to finding himself adopted as our next ex-patriot poet, Chad VanGaalen will find that America’s soil is suitable to cultivate maple trees, and Grammy statues are noticeably heavier than Canada’s cold Juno awards.
Recommended if you like:
The Pixies; Flaming Lips; John Vanderslice; Modest Mouse; Neil Young |