• A more confident VanGaalen releases his most consistent vision to date.
Local favourite Chad VanGaalen hasn’t left his bedroom on his latest album, Soft Airplane, but it sounds like he might have moved out of the basement. Make no mistake, Soft Airplane is still thoroughly a Chad VanGaalen album — his usual lo-fi esthetic is in full force, his signature falsetto still hauntingly wavers and he’s still obsessed with death, dreaming and ’90s nostalgia — it’s just more fully formed than anything he’s done before.
The album displays a confidence that was previously lacking from much of VanGaalen’s material. While he often created brilliant hunks of idiosyncratic indie rock, VanGaalen’s earlier compositions occasionally felt awkward and incomplete. Soft Airplane is certainly his most consistent work, even as it finds him incorporating new elements into his sound more effectively than he’s ever managed before. The most obvious example of this is Soft Airplane’s noticeable electronic leaning. Cacophonous squelches gradually take over “Inside the Molecules.” A battle between digital and analogue instruments rages throughout “Phantom Anthills.” Drum machines and cheesy synth noises dominate “TMNT Mask.” This is not the first time VanGaalen has played in the electronic sandbox, but he’s never done it as often or as successfully as he does here.
This newfound familiarity with electronics affords VanGaalen a depth his earlier albums often lacked. Compared to some of his work on Infiniheart and Skelliconnection, the texture on Soft Airplane is wondrously thick, with several layers full of sonically interesting distractions filling out each song’s simple melody. That VanGaalen does this without sacrificing his lo-fi charm is perhaps the album’s greatest triumph.
Soft Airplane only really falters when VanGaalen steps too far out of his comfort zone, like when he drops his falsetto on “Bones of Man,” or when he descends into abstract noise on “Frozen Energon.” Other than these few hiccoughs, though, Soft Airplane is a resounding success.
