Chad VanGaalen: "Flower Gardens"

If Woody Allen were an indie rock fan, he’d probably sympathize with Chad VanGaalen. The guy’s a wee bit neurotic; for one, he changed up the sequence of Skelliconnection to emphasize the rockers (so if you downloaded it already, you might want to change up your track numbers) just weeks before the album’s forthcoming release, and for another, he’s still singing about the apocalypse. A chant of “I know it’s all gonna end!” comprises the chorus of the album-opening “Flower Gardens,” which kick-starts with distortion and gargantuan drums worthy of recent Mission of Burma.

Until that riff comes in. It’s the one that my editor, professed VanGaalen fan Scott Reid, refers to diminutively as “Danko Jones” (must be a Canadian thing) but really just sounds a little silly for the singer. Here’s VanGaalen, he of the obscure instruments and alternate tunings, chugging along – nay, rocking out - in a major key on an electric guitar. The expected studio tricks are there – the nonchalant electronic frittering that leads into the song, the coke bottle percussion (what it really is, no one knows but Chad) – but “Flower Gardens” is an unabashed punk rave-up. So, this may be a funny track for the home recordist, but it’s a good one – and even a necessary point of growth for a musician who admittedly hasn’t played a whole lot of rock music. It would probably make Allen nervous.