Chad VanGaalen: "Willow Tree"

Finally, a taste of Soft Airplane: Chad VanGaalen’s third record, and the first to truly capture him in real time. That is, post- the gargantuan back catalogue of songs that, chiseled down, gave us Infiniheart (2004) and Skelliconnection (2006). “Willow Tree,” Airplane‘s gorgeous, subdued opener, doesn’t exactly signal a huge departure; it’s got all the introspection on death and the consciousness-slash-body-slash-Nature disconnect he’s been mining since his self-released CD-R days. To wit, as this sums up what his not-entirely-dedicated-to-this-stuff-but-mostly lyrical style is about:

Sleep all day just waiting for the sun to set / I hang my clothes up on the line / When I die I’ll hang my head beside the willow tree / When I’m dead is when I’ll be free / You can take my body, put it in a boat / Light it on fire you can use the kerosene / Take my body, put it in a boat / Light it on fire, send it out to sea / [Lots of “oooh”ing and “yeahhh”ing as the arrangement starts to really come alive, Chad of All Trades juggling banjo, accordion, and vibraphone, each likely home-made]

Escape in death, the disposability of the body, the release of the consciousness into…I’m not exactly sure, but he describes it as a sort of collective oneness elsewhere, most directly on Skelliconnection‘s “Wing Finger.” Like I said, it’s grim and familiar stuff, by now what we could dub classic VanGaalen, gorgeously sung and backed with intricately crafted folk-pop. Fans of those first two records will no doubt eat this up, whetting their appetite for twelve tracks that follow it—which…great news: as much as I want to stress how good this song is, I’m even more thrilled to point out that it in no way reflects the rest of this record’s arc, especially its insane middle section with Cadence Weapon-nudging loops and a “handmade robotic device that strikes out an awkwardly fallible and surprisingly human rhythm“ (!?) and a song called “TMNT Mask” that somehow lives up the name and…shit. I’ll wait until September to get into all of that. We’ll all have a lot of head-scratching to do.

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