| Whistleblower 2005-10-29, 11:32 am |
| Paxil Revolt
John Vanderslice battles his demons (and his meds), emerging victorious with
a killer new record.
By Michael Alan Goldberg
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issue...usic/music.html
Published: Wednesday, October 26, 2005
John Vanderslice is all smiles. On a small stage at the rear of Seattle's
Easy Street Records, he grins as he plows through a solo acoustic set for
the gathered throng leaning against the CD racks and used-vinyl bins,
bobbing their heads to songs from the San Franciscan's terrific-sounding,
phenomenally affecting fifth full-length, Pixel Revolt (Barsuk). After the
performance, he eagerly shakes hands and jokes around with each fan in the
autograph queue. Later, a dozen fans in the parking lot won't let him leave
just yet, so he hops on a car roof and beams as he strums his
four-track-recording ode, "Me and My 424," under the darkening evening sky.
In one sense, his demeanor is entirely expected: The 38-year-old artist and
producer has a well-deserved reputation as one of the nicest, friendliest,
most down-to-earth musicians in all of indie popdom. Yet a spin through
Pixel Revolt reveals some of his most unsettling songs to date, and it's a
bit shocking to see him look so cheerful in its aftermath. Sure, Vanderslice
is known for dark, vivid, fictional narratives lodged inside thick, melodic
layers of guitars, synths, live and mechanical drumming, horns, vibraphone,
and loads of other studio bells and whistles (literally); his stories
frequently address mortality, familial strife, political waywardness, and
societal dysfunction. The first half of Revolt is packed with such
melodrama: A coalition soldier takes a fatal bullet during his first foray
into Iraq ("Plymouth Rock"); an anti-American militant questions his
commitment to the cause ("Exodus Damage"); a homicide detective suspects one
of his three fellow cops is a serial killer ("Continuation").
The record's second half, though, seems to turn more personal and a lot more
disturbing. There's the Hold on, hold on refrain of the ominously titled
"Farewell Transmission." There's "Dead Slate Pacific," a quasi-love song to
a therapist who has prescribed the narrator the antidepressant Celexa, in
which Vanderslice achingly croons The only thing standing between me and
that long rope over a carpenter's beam was you. Finally, consider the
snail's-paced, strings-laced instrumental elegy "The Golden Gate" -- in his
Revolt "user's guide" at JohnVanderslice.com, John notes that "Almost
everyone jumps from the eastern side of the bridge, facing the lights of San
Francisco."
Granted, one shouldn't assume these moments are any less a figment of
Vanderslice's imagination than his more fanciful narratives, but they're
still enough to make you ask the guy, "Uhh, are you okay?"
"I am now," he chuckles shortly after the Easy Street appearance, "but I was
in a wormhole of suffering and I could not get out."
Confirming that Pixel Revolt contains the most nakedly autobiographical
songs he has ever written, Vanderslice explains that his troubles began in
2004, not long after the release of his critically acclaimed Cellar Door.
Burnt out from the most touring he'd ever done for one album, stressed about
the follow-up, and severely bummed about breaking up with his longtime
girlfriend, he found all of those miseries converging to create an even more
dire state of mind.
"I was a little afraid of what I was gonna do," he admits. "I was having
these unhealthy, supremely morbid thoughts, and I'm already a morbid guy, so
if I can shock myself, then that's really something! And [Mountain Goats
leader] John Darnielle, who I was working on new material with at the time,
was like, 'Man, I'm really worried about you.' When friends who are as crazy
as you are are worried about you, that's a sign."
And so, as he eloquently describes in "Dead Slate Pacific," Vanderslice went
to a therapist and got on Celexa. "I don't romanticize being depressed or
psychologically disturbed," he notes. "I don't think there's anything to be
gained by it. A lot of songwriters feed off of it, but for me, I'm much more
creative and productive when I'm happy and stable."
Still, as he continued the steady process of crafting Pixel Revolt's lyrics
with the help of Darnielle (who "edited, expanded, and improved upon" them,
as Vanderslice writes in the album's liner notes), Vanderslice found his
mental state worsening. The situation only intensified as he commenced
recording sessions at his renowned Tiny Telephone studio down in SF's
Mission District, joined by longtime collaborator Scott Solter and a host of
other musicians.
"I went to look for a Christmas gift for my mom down at San Francisco
[Shopping] Centre, and it was like there were waterfalls of data and these
garbled sounds that were choking my cerebellum," Vanderslice recalls. "It
was like a bad acid trip, and I hadn't been out of my house much or in that
intense of an environment in a while, and I was thinking, Am I getting
crazier or is this drug producing this effect? So I just thought, Man, I
gotta get off this shit."
Unlike the fate of some of his fictional characters, this story has a happy
ending: Vanderslice switched to another antidepressant that helped steady
his moods. To conquer his burgeoning stage fright, he played guitar with the
Mountain Goats on a handful of spring dates, a pressure-free environment
among friends that helped tremendously. By this past summer, he concludes,
he was completely off meds and pretty much back to his happy old self. "Now
that I look back on it, I see it as a storm system that moves in, maybe does
some damage, and then passes, and you have to look at it as a natural part
of being alive," he says. "That's how I get through it without being afraid
for the future."
Which is why you'll see him smile, even after he sings "Dead Slate Pacific."
"One of the regrets I had when I finished the record was that I felt there's
some songs on it I'm never gonna wanna play live, because it's gonna dredge
all that shit up," Vanderslice admits. "But the thing that happens is that
when you feel better, you get a little self-assured in the sense that, 'You
know what, I'm on stable ground again,' and if you can't embrace all the
crap you went through and aren't able to face it on some level, then this is
not living. You can't be afraid. This really happened, you wrote this, and
this is the truth."
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