2004's Cellar Door made my life complicated. I had just begun trying to write storytelling lyrics for a band, and then I hear John Vanderslice absolutely nail 12 songs to my forehead. I was frustrated, to say the least. When his follow up, Pixel Revolt, came out, I had hope. Some of the songs were nowhere near as forthright and perfect. It was a slumping (though not failing) album with glaring holes. I was surprised how relieved I was when I didn't absolutely love every second of it. Was I rooting for another man to fail? Was I am man that was so beset with jealousy that I was happy at an altogether great songwriter's misgivings?
When I got word that Emerald City was slated to be more like Cellar Door, I got excited for two reasons. One, when most people say "a rekindling of old material," it is usually a poor effort at trying to recreate a mood or feeling. Two, I was hoping, now that I have essentially failed to create anything worth hearing and resigned to my failures, that Vanderslice could succeed in making another damn-near-perfect album. I had no idea what to expect—a failure of colossal proportions was out of the question, but other than that I was pretty much clueless.
Again, I was surprised. The revamped Cellar Door this was not. Instead, this was a nine-song triumph of what makes Vanderslice good to begin with: busy backgrounds, vocal harmonies reaching their heights at perfect times, human stories wracked with emotion and a simple strum of a guitar in the forefront of a series of protest songs and sure-voiced stories. There's not a misplaced word or note. There's not a mention of anything over-the-top, even in his September 11th allusions, war-protests, or not-so-subtle imagery ("White Dove," especially). From kidnappings come revulsion and blinding rage (the aforementioned "White Dove"), from held flights come dead relationships (the personal "Central Booking"), from dead family members come disinformation ("Tablespoon of Codeine"), and from the mind of one of best songwriters in this age (seriously) comes an album sure to quiet you from your political discussions no matter your opinion on the voice of the story.
What is so surprising, then, is the fact that nothing, not even comparisons I want to make to Bruce Springsteen's The Rising, or his own work in the past, can permit you to understand the manic precision of each noise, each piano piece, each painstakingly crafted lyric. The reason for this perfection and the unprepared listener is quite simple, actually. Vanderslice has such an ear for what the listener wants and what the listener needs, that he leads notes astray, cuts off harmonies, and pushes what a normal songwriter relishes aside. He doesn't give away the easy notes or the easy ending to a story. Instead, he leaves the listener wanting, not more, but just wanting. Maybe even better: waiting. The listener waits for the next note that doesn't come, the lessons learned that never arrive. This is the true meaning of the protest song. For example, when Dylan wrote, he never learned a damn thing. It was a mish-mash of cleverness and the knowing of absentia. When (character) Allen Armisted sings in "Tablespoon of Codeine," he sings of a bitterness in knowing what the world cannot learn. When the friendly neighbor of "White Dove" speaks, he knows how awful the ending to everything is, so he speaks of vengeance though it is impossible. When Vanderslice himself narrates "Central Booking" he is ending not only the album, but his understanding of how the world is meant to work: in circles of nonsense, in the absence of beauty and the death of innocence, whether it be children, soldiers, tower 1 or 2 victims or his own relationship. Perhaps put best by his young character in "The Parade" (the strongest song of the album in most respects), "We skipped out the parade/ what was there to commemorate?/ And what was left to remember?/ Not sure what really happened on that day."
The innocence of a child wandering through his life, doing the things he/she always did can pierce perfectly the understanding the elder humans cannot. The parade is worth skipping. The war is worth missing. The conversations are worth condensing. In the end, September will win every time ("Looks like September has won once again," is the last line of the album for a reason). The songwriter's choice is not to protest, but to speak at all. Vanderslice has figured this out, and has spoken it perfectly. Thankfully, I am not trying anymore. |