Chad VanGaalen’s latest LP satisfies with ‘bizarre fairy tales’

Chad VanGaalen

Shrink Dust

Grade: B+

Calgary artist Chad VanGaalen has single-handedly built a reputation for rivaling The Flaming Lips as music’s biggest weirdo — especially since the Lips’ front man Wayne Coyne seems to have had a midlife crisis full of accusations of being all types of crazy. 

But the two are hardly comparable beyond their respective levels of creativity. While The Flaming Lips have always incorporated more drone-like noise in their work, VanGaalen is the soft-spoken whisperer, singing like he’s putting children to sleep with bizarre fairy tales. 

Indeed, VanGaalen’s records often feel like a storybook with his homemade illustrations in the album artwork that accompany violent but clearly descriptive lyrics. 

As the title suggests, Shrink Dust is a warped and introverted record. In it, VanGaalen calls himself a “monster” and “evil.” This language could imply that he is also going through a crisis or meditative state but has retreated inward to reflect rather than act out or compromise his art through collaboration. “Let’s go back to my cell, instead of raising hell,” he softly suggests on the rhythmic “Frozen Paradise.”

His specific fantasy descriptions particularly stand out on Shrink Dust, which he has said partly make up the soundtrack to his homemade animated film that is currently in the works. VanGaalen will create the animation and score himself, which should come as no surprise since he already does all of his own animation for his music videos. 

VanGaalen exercises some of his artistic and vivid imagery on the uncharacteristically upbeat but lyrically morose “Monster.” He nonsensically describes himself with “skin that’s grown scaly and yellowish brown” with two prying hands that “grew out of my shoulders/ And I can’t explain why/ But it’s hurting my eyes.” 

VanGaalen has also called his latest effort a country album, a decidedly different approach than his previous four records — the last being the musically wonderful yet questionably named Diaper Island.  

His newly acquired pedal steel guitar adds a fresh new layer to VanGaalen’s lonely alien tunes, bringing his private universe down to a more relatable ground for the audience. The most common Americana prairie sound is showcased in songs such as the harmonic “Weighed Sin,” “Hangman’s Son” and the send-off track, “Cosmic Destroyer.” 

“Oh, have mercy, on the demons that curse me/ Oh, lay it on me/ When my time has come,” he sings on “Hangman’s Son,” a reflection on mortality that begins like a Wilco ballad with the pedal steel guitar’s slow whine.

Keep in mind, a VanGaalen country record will often seem like anything but country to the average listener. With songs like “Cut Off My Hands,” in which the severed limbs swim away from him “like a pair of bloody crabs,” or the ghostly echoic “Where Are You?” VanGaalen creates a folky-psychedelic subgenre of country filled with bouncy synths and other outlandish yet organic noises. 

The result is VanGaalen successfully finding the bridge between the warm and relatable Americana feelings with the infinitely loony but undeniably intriguing universe of VanGaalen’s songwriting.