DOLITTLE PRESENTS New Member Posts:8  
| 10/1/2009 5:10 AM |
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Dolittle
Presents
John
Vanderslice
+ special
guests
Whelan’s, Friday November
6th
Tickets
€13.00 plus booking fee from WAV Box-Office (Lo-Call 1890 200 078), City Discs,
www.tickets.ie, Ticketmaster outlets nationwide
Within the world of indie rock,
he's carved him a niche all his own with clean but inventive production and
lyrics that spend much of their time in the heads of unique characters.-
Pitchfork, 7.8
A unique, if impenetrable artist
who deserves a wider audience. – Q Magazine
Continuing
on the success of his seventh solo album Romanian Names, released on Dead Oceans,
John Vanderslice returns to Dublin to celebrate a collection of songs that
have been arousing reviewers and listeners alike, with most reviews unified by
the belief that this is his best work yet. If you've never dipped an ear into
his world before, Romanian Names is a great place to start. Catch him live in
Whelan’s on November 6th
The most noteworthy thing about John
Vanderslice's new album is this: Romanian Names is the best record he's made to
date. The 12 songs represent a career-defining moment, a pitch-perfect
collection written and recorded with the utmost care and
attention.
Vanderslice is certainly not the first artist to make such a
leap several albums into a career – think Guided by Voices on Bee Thousand,
Spoon's Kill the Moonlight or Of Montreal's Sunlandic Twins. Vanderslice’s
newest, his first for Dead Oceans, makes that colossal step and separates itself
from an already top-notch body of work.
Throughout Romanian Names, he
sings with a newfound, unwavering confidence. He gets right at you with the
sing-along choruses and punchy hooks of album opener "Tremble and Tear" and the
poppy gem "C&O
Canal." The songs know when
to patiently step back with subtle gestures and knock-out atmospherics like
those on display in "Forest Knolls" and "Summer Stock," and the album is glued
together with the stripped-bare title track "Romanian Names" and the gorgeous
Arthur Russell-esque album closer "Hard Times."
Lyrically, Vanderslice is
employing an approach far less dense, less concerned with narrative and cohesion
than in his past works. Instead, he's found a new tone and angle here, one that
feels self-assured, natural, and unafraid. The results are some of his most
singular and intriguing lyrics yet.
The process of writing Romanian Names
differed from that of prior Vanderslice albums. This time, he has moved outside
the normal (and by now maybe too comfortable) confines of his famed San Francisco recording
studio, Tiny Telephone. He constructed a simple basement studio in his home, and
wrote and recorded the elemental demos for these songs alone with simply a
guitar or piano to accompany his voice. The emphasis was placed on melody and
structure, putting thoughts of instrumentation and studio wizardry on hold until
there was a complete and stable foundation to build upon. The songs were given
time to breathe, to be re-worked and re-organized, and sometimes enough time to
be thrown out entirely. Benefiting from this organic and evolutionary process,
Romanian Names coheres beautifully.
This is not to say that what ended up
on tape is less an aural stake-in-the-ground than past efforts. Like a storied
artifact from the '70s, the tunes were subjected to sonic scrutiny by
Vanderslice and longtime producer Scott Solter. As a result, Romanian Names
sounds as though it were from another time, with Vanderslice and Solter's magic
echoing John Cale's Paris 1919, Fleetwood Mac's
Rumours and Bowie's Berlin-era output. Romanian Names is a
symphony of sounds both subtle and lush, and as an album it provides the perfect
backdrop for John Vanderslice’s deft and fully-realized
songwriting.
http://www.johnvanderslice.com/
http://www.myspace.com/johnvanderslice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA_9rsmpOdo
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