John Vanderslice’s voice warmly opens Pixel Revolt singing, “Being Joan Crawford at 21was easy,” a bit of a croon accompanied by jazzy-swing guitars and keyboards in a rather sad story about the movie starlet who eventually became a recluse in her old age. Vanderslice’s stories—some fiction, some historical, some autobiographical—are like this: intimate, loving, but heartbreaking all the same. Vanderslice’s songs all retain some jazz-influence, even as drum programming, samples, and beats change it up a bit. It’s his croon about Joan Crawford on “Letter to the East Coast” that acts like a fingerprint which cannot be disguised. Sondre Lerche’s jazz-influenced rock comes to mind with the way that Vanderslice never drags but never speeds past on a song, never is far from rock ‘n’ roll but is much closer to a movie score for a jazz lounge scene.
Under the Radar magazine reviewed Pixel Revolt saying, “Instrumental passages drag on, and with no apparent limitations, it’s hard to hold such a dense record together.” However, I think the fault lies in approaching Vanderslice only from the Indie Rock side. While certainly Vanderslice comes close at times to artists like ill lit where rock music meets mixes of beats, samples, and ambient elements, if you don’t come from the Jazz side of things, the wanderings, instrumental sections, ranging explorations, and diversity make less sense. From a jazz perspective, this album does exactly what an album should do: find hints of melodies and expand them, shorten them, play with them, and even obliterate them.
Vanderslice’s jazz sense and palette of many styles actually then helps him to develop his stories musically underneath the words. A dance bass line accompanies the more upbeat “Exodus Damage” which disparately is a “we knew this was going to happen” song about September 11, 2001. Vanderslice sings “Dance dance revolution” on the chorus, a reference apparently to Japanese video game arcades where there are games that the player must physically dance in order to manipulate the screen characters. The song takes you back to that sense the United States (and the world?) experienced following 9/11 where it seemed like it took something this catastrophic to wake us up to realize there was more to the world than our own entertainment. Yet, how much have we remembered from those days, as Vanderslice says himself, “No one ever says a word about/So much that happens in the world.” I love this song. It’s got a great beat, you can dance to it, and it makes you realize that we can be really ignorant of the world around us, the plight of other people’s tragedies, and our own perpetuation of terror. I give it a 5 out of 5!
Thank you to John Vanderslice and Barsuk Records for the review CD.
