Stereogum » Chad VanGaalen

The 6 Best Videos Of The Week

jessica — Fri, 27 May 2011 17:20:01 +0000

Happy Friday. This week we’ve got recent videos from The Vaccines, Chad VanGaalen, Bikini, and Swedish House Mafia. It was another slow week for new videos, so I included a couple of clips that came out in previous weeks, like VanGaalen’s awesome natives and aliens clip, animated by VanGaalen himself (he also drew his own album cover). I also loved Amos Lee’s recent stop motion animation video. All the pieces in the video are sculpted out of white paper, but there’s so much depth and texture to them. Watch it on mute if you’d like. The videos:

Chad VanGaalen – “Sara” (Stereogum Premiere)

brandon — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:29:37 +0000

“Sara,” from J Mascis pal Chad VanGaalen’s fourth full-length album Diaper Island, opens with a pretty whistle then turns into a bit of a winsome lover’s sigh. The collection’s the first the Calgary hero’s done in his new home studio, Yoko Eno. He recorded the other stuff at home, too, but in his “cramped” basement: You can feel the extra space and light, especially in this one, the album’s sparest, widest-eyed moment.

J Mascis – “Not Enough” Video (Stereogum Premiere)

brandon — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:56:21 +0000

Sub Pop labelmate Chad VanGaalen created this playful, psychedelic video for “Not Enough,” the ambling, sing-along lead single from J Mascis’ great (mostly) acoustic album Several Shades of Why. It features lots of eyeballs, a couple cracked skulls, and several shades of J.

The ‘Gum Drop XCVI: Hear Chad VanGaalen’s Black Mold, Win A Motorola Rival A455

brandon — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:27:59 +0000

Black Mold is the electronic project of 2009 Polaris Finalist Chad VanGaalen. Debut LP Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz (out 8/11 via Flemish Eye) is a collection of instrumental sounds created mostly via acoustic instruments, bells, vintage analogue/hand-built modular synths, etc. See, for example, the lovely, otherworldly cello explorations of opener “Metal Spider Webs.” It premiered in this weeks’ Drop. While we had him, we asked Chad about the song and the project. He let us know, among other things, about where he goes to “smoke tweezoids” and “trip out on potato bugs” and that he once “had a dream where Santa had a toy train coming out of his vagina loaded with toys.” Take a look/listen.

This week we also offered the chance for three winners to take home a new Motorola Rival A455, “a loaded messaging machine that helps you out-thumb your friends.”

Stream Chad VanGaalen’s Soft Airplane

amrit — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:11:47 +0000

Because as we’ve noted, it is rather awesome. Listen at MySpace. The album’s out 9/9 via Sub Pop.

New Chad VanGaalen Video – “Molten Light”

amrit — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:18:45 +0000

Anyone keeping up with Chad VanGaalen — and everyone should be — has seen his drawings at some point or another, gracing the covers to his albums, lending an air of animated surreality to videos by Guster and Chad VanGaalen. And once again, Chad does himself a solid — a murderous and weird, colorfully ominous solid — with the treatment for the vengeful and eerie strums of “Molten Light.” The twisted fairy tale also serves as the second listen to his forthcoming Sub Pop release Soft Airplane, so key in on that. And also how easily you’ll sing along to “I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.”

New Chad VanGaalen – “Willow Tree”

brandon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:31:53 +0000

We were just talking Calgary in the writeup for BTW the Neighbourhood Council. It’s back to Alberta again with “Willow Tree,” one of 12 new songs from ex-busker Chad VanGaalen’s forthcoming Soft Airplane, the follow up to 2006′s Skelliconnection. He captured the new one on “an old tape machine” and JVC boom box in his Calgary basement. The album’s opener “Willow Tree” is a sad, joyfully resolved and pretty sing-song that involves water-born, Viking-style burial/cremation rites, fueled by kerosene and freedom. The willow tree plays an important roll, as do the melancholic horns.

New Guster Video – “Lightning Rod”

Stereogum — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:37:20 +0000

Whether he’s drawing or recording, most everything Chad VanGaalen does artistically is quick-engaging, left of center, and unique to his distinct mesh of influences. Here he lends his trademark brand of freehand drawing (which Ininiheart album owners shoudl know well) to touring juggernaut Guster for the clip to “Lightning Rod,” a sublimely sparse and melancholic track from last year’s Ganging Up On The Sun. Chad takes the tune through lots of shape shifting, image morphing, and perspective shifting, leaving us with absolutely no clue about what’s going down but loving it like a father loves his baby-cum-patricidal, lightening-spewing purple cloud.

No surprises that Guster’s on the road (with Mason Jennings), and we figure Chad will be ready to follow up Skelliconnection with an album culled from the 857 songs he wrote in his bedroom last year any day now.

Ganging Up On The Sun is available on Reprise.

New Chad VanGaalen Video – “Flower Gardens”

Scott — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:14:41 +0000

Featuring animation by … Chad VanGaalen!

New Chad VanGaalen – “Dead Ends”

amrit — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:43:42 +0000

Chad left us hanging a bit too long after his great debut Infiniheart. A year or two may not be long for some, but when you’ve already written hundreds of tunes over years in your cold Canadian bedroom — and they’re this good — we want an album every few months!

Chad VanGaalen – “Dead Ends” (MP3 Link Expired)

Black Francis and Neil Young would be proud of this cut from Chad’s sophomore Sub Pop effort. And you may hate to hear it, but it’s nothing but Win Butler’s quaver that VanGaalen’s channeling on the tune’s big hook. The rest of the album’s got genre-leaping knockouts like “Sing Me To Sleep” and “Red Hot Drops.” And you can grab the killer “Mini TVs” over at YANP.

You dig? Like we said, he’s Canadian — so you know he’s good.