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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.
JV’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, JV 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, JV 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, JV 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 JV’s past efforts.
Like a storied artifact from the ‘70s, the tunes
were subjected to sonic scrutiny by JV and longtime producer
Scott Solter. As a result, Romanian Names sounds as though
it were from another time, with JV 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 JV’s deft and fully-realized songwriting.
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