Chad VanGaalen / Women

Boogz made enough clear to not have to reiterate too much, but that won’t stop me from trying. Because Women was last year’s biggest surprise, for me at least, but more because Chad VanGaalen is such an arresting presence, that simple greatness—again, personally, of experiencing an artist functionally press and satisfy every biological node, bundle, or ineffable cloud of knowingness inside me—is something to be reminded of as often as possible. As often as Chad wants to come to town and show us his totally fucked up animated film paid for by the Canadian government, really. As often as he’s willing to get on stage only to loom over me as if his prolificacy were physically contained within him. You can probably guess: he is very tall and I was excited for this show.

For a moment, before descriptions and facsimiles ensue, can we take the time to celebrate that? I mean the glee in re-discovery, finding out anew why there was ever love there in the first place. This is love that, unexpected, was never fully explored, instead obsessed over and indulged in then left alone to be normal. Affairs are like that; a shotgun wedding with Soft Airplane is still called a shotgun wedding—wait until there’s buckshot to be picked out of your teeth.

Anyway, the Holocene is, as far as I can tell, a converted gallery space, an edifice adorned typically with industrial blankness, no real sign, and the implication that a party in attendance we’ll know where they are when they’re actually there, which in itself makes that party feel pretty cool. The interior, as a pleasant surprise, is cozy and unassuming, despite the high-ceilings and purposeless hallway; perhaps it was the Brightblack Morning Light making my gin taste sleepy, but the chiaroscuro of that sunset picture made perfect, soothing sense. Here was where VanGaalen would briefly appear in a furious, expanding swarm of detritus, each bit charged with delight and concern both, like a huge old-money family of bees finally escaping his stomach but taking pause upon confronting the open air, confused with Stockholm syndrome. This is all, in fact, true: for twenty minutes before he played a set composed almost entirely of last year’s Soft Airplane, he screened an animated film he’d been feverishly working on for the past six months, introducing the holy mess of crooked, awesome cartoons by describing that the Canadian government will pay you “retarded amounts of money” for stuff like that if you know how to correctly ask. Over semi-conscious synths and prattling, prickly drum clacks, his short movie took frightening turns as frequently as it followed an image totally laughable or dumbly gross. Cars became monsters, astronauts became putrid aliens, amoebas became amphibians and back again in constant flux—every line or color mutated without restraint—until it just kinda ended, no real interstitial flow between the projector blurring and VanGaalen ducking onto stage with a hilariously dwarfed Steinberg and Women’s Matthew Flegel and Christopher Reimer in tow.

About Women: as if taking a cue from opening openers, woodsy-rockists Plants, Women looked exactly how they sounded, as I had suspected, stern-faced but still entranced, flirting with indifference as haphazardly as their allegiance to any genre other than tightness. Flagel took the role of default front man, the leading point of the diamond they created on stage, and in turn his bass was set high in the mix, matched only by Michael Wallace’s drums; my first revelation was how stalwartly the rhythm section led cuts like “Black Rice” or “Lawncare,” transforming songs I’d previously adhered to for their sloppy, contagious melodies. The girl behind the boards was doing a stellar job compensating for the claustrophobia of the small space, allowing the songs to upend and open up, but there was nothing she could do to save lead singer Patrick Flegel’s vocals. He, sadly, was swallowed by everything, occupied sometimes with an impressive riff splitting the room in two but mostly unable to provide the charge his delivery needed to hold class with every other facet of the band. Pleased as I was by witnessing their record gain such challenging and panoramic range, P. Flegel’s dead eyes held an off-putting sense of resignation, drowning as he was, sometimes, before all the goofy hipsters. Maybe he was tired, hitting a mid-tour lull. Meanwhile, M. Flegel drank beer and Wallace just plain ruled.

So Chad VanGaalen didn’t really have to duck to get onstage, but that’s how I recall it, the high ceilings just not high enough (though they were). Thusly he burrowed through everything stupendous off Soft Airplane, and “Mini TVs,” and a Thurston Moore song wherein he broke a string. This was inevitable; him swatting feverishly at a Steinberg is like petting a mouse with an axe, and, as if to prematurely block all expectations about the variety and richness of his recordings, he stuck mostly to that stunted little contraption, punctuating his giant-ness by a banjo (“Molten Light,” eeeee!) he openly disdained and a shadow of blipping knobs over which he hunkered for a staid but magnificent closing in “TMNT Mask.” While he was changing his string he played us more of the film, killing time, tossing cool shit at us lest we stop to formulate a mundane thought. Without insulting his audience, VanGaalen was embracing spontaneity and simultaneously showcasing just how much fun it is for him to be so humbly prolific, humble because he just can’t wait to show us everything he’s been poring over.

It ended abruptly. I hear Flegel mumble something like, “Ok, time to [indecipherable],” which I translated as a decision to drink. Then we left, walked swiftly out of that unassuming room and from that overassuming building, away from the unassuming artist with an overassuming body. From merch table to apartment was, say, fifteen minutes, counting the unlacing of my shoes. The next day I awoke with no hangover and my ears weren’t ringing. The awesomeness, in other words, was convenient. There was no struggle in my satisfaction, no hang-up for my love. If I was looking for a reason to renew my saturating affection for Chad VanGaalen and for Women, then I’d realized something better: just how fucking easy it is.