John Vanderslice, Pixel Revolt
Vanderslice gives us some sweet melodies to hum on the way to the end of the world.
Pixel Revolt, John Vanderslice's fifth solo album, is a pretty, but agitated, affair. Sweet melodies are threaded with unexpected sound effects and topped with pointed lyrics, missives from a writer unafraid to face the ways we let each other down. Vanderslice mentions love enough times to suggest a preoccupation with the subject, but he professes little certainty that it can ever really be achieved. On “New Zealand Pines,” he assures himself that he will be okay “if I can keep/The things I love at bay” — a line he issues softly, his grainy voice otherworldly as instruments swell behind him.
Current events, another topic that breeds ambivalence, are also part of Vanderslice's Revolt. In “Exodus Damage,” the narrator talks about seeing the second plane hit the World Trade Center and the devastation and futility he felt after — “Let it all fall down/I'm ready for the end.” But there's buoyancy here too, in the rich, full indie-rocking music Vanderslice chose to set these lyrics against. The dizzying mix of vibraphone, acoustic guitar, mellotron, strings and pipe organ — to say nothing of his namechecking the videogame Dance Dance Revolution — nearly erases the bleakness of the topic. Vanderslice is not, after all, ready for the end. If his songs serve as gentle reminders that it's coming, ready or not, at least we have something to hum along the way.
