Customer Reviews

Skelliconnection (Dig)

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VanGaalen is a Calgary based illustrator/animator/musician who recorded the 15 songs that make up "Skelliconnection" in his basement studio at home. This is by no means a lo-fi recording, though. Instead, it's a beautifully produced, stylistically diverse album that sounds like a collaboration between Devendra Banhart, Beck and the Moldy Peaches. Standout tracks include the rocker "Flower Garden," "Red Hot Drops," "See-Thru-Skin," "Dead Ends," and the lullaby-like "Sing Me 2 Sleep." This has to be one of the best indie releases this year, and one of the best albums of the year, period.

One of the most inscrutable artists I've heard in a long while, this Canadian one-man band exploits indie electronica, creepy folk and barn-burning rock and ends up with something utterly unique.

I heard "Flower Gardens," this album's opening cut, on Sirius' Left of Center and immediately went online to order a copy. It's a barn-burning romp powered by pounding tom-toms and fuzzy, down-picked eighth notes on the bass. But there's nothing else on Skelliconnection that bears any resemblance to this song whatsoever.

Chad Van Gaalen is something of a musical chameleon, a highly imaginative and apparently wildly prolific one-man band who veers all over the place, stylistically, going wherever whimsy takes him. Luckily, he succeeds at most of what he attempts; whether it's metallic bluster ("Flower Gardens"), creepy folk ("Rolling Thunder") indie electronica ("Red Hot Drops"), Appalachian blues ("Wind Driving Dogs") or any number of other musical subgenres that pop up over the course of the album's 15 tracks. Van Gaalen's soaring falsetto occasionally recalls Thom Yorke or Neil Young. The lyrics are usually bizarre (conjuring pterodactyls, headless corpses, photosynthesis and graveyards) and the music jumps all over the place, but it never sounds like he's trying to get your attention.

By the time you reach the end of Skelliconnection, it's hard to believe you're still listening to the same album that started with "Flower Gardens."

Saw the artist in Canada and recommend alternative rock/EMO listeners to check this CD out.