Send "Chad VanGaalen " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pastemagazine |
 From Stevie Wonder and Todd Rundgren to Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, self-sufficiency in recording—being your own one-man band—has served as more than just a badge of honor. It's also a disarmingly simple way to maintain consistency over the course of multiple albums, if not a career. On Soft Airplane, bedroom/basement-recording aficionado Chad VanGaalen still plays nearly every instrument in the mix, as he did on previous LPs Infiniheart and Skelliconnection, but something's changed. Where earlier albums could seem scattershot, with tracks independently culled from hundreds of stockpiled songs, Soft Airplane is concise and fully-realized. Here, the meandering, blippy stoner jams skillfully bleed into poignant sentiments—all in the same song. The amalgamation works, especially on one of the album's highlights, "Cries of the Dead," which balances a "neighbor beating his dog in the basement" with the memorable tableau: "You went to the mountains true and painted what you saw / You came back late and hid the painting underneath our couch / And I wasn't there when you made it / But I feel like I'm there when I'm lookin' at it." It still moves, though, with a lyrical tendency toward the morbid and macabre and VanGaalen's warbly, wavering voice that hovers somewhere near fellow Canadian Geddy Lee's skyscrapingly-high register. In the drowsy, banjo-propelled "Willow Tree," VanGaalen politely requests a Viking-style shrug-off of his mortal coil: "You can take my body / put it in a boat / light it on fire / send it out to sea." And speaking of VanGaalen's countrymen, the surprisingly sweet "Inside the Molecules" finds Mr. VanG nestling a physics-nerd love poem inside some crunchy, nourishing riffs that could make Neil Young crack a smile, even at his most cantankerous. Much like the basement, Soft Airplane is a little scary (and dark and dank), yet filled with untold creative surprises and delights....full text |
| Avclub |
| Chad VanGaalen sounds a bit like a schizophrenic son of his fellow Canadian Neil Young. VanGaalen's past collections, cobbled together from hundreds of songs written years apart, jarringly leapfrogged styles and themes—it sounded like he needed meds. Settling into his Calgary basement to pen Soft Airplane gave VanGaalen focus and purpose, making the Neil Young comparison more appropriate. Mostly recording on an old tape machine and a boom-box, VanGaalen embraces the charms of the homemade aesthetic: He delicately layers guitar, banjo, percussion (both standard and unidentifiable), electronic blips and loops and samples, synthesizers, distortion, and accordions, but never loses his sophisticated fragility. Whether creaking through the hollow harmonies of The Shins ("City Of Electric Light") or softly drifting through wonder-filled banjo-pluckers ("Willow Tree"), Soft Airplane is complex and deliberate, so that even an attempt at synth-dance ("Phantom Anthills") fits the hopeful, dreamy country vibe of Young's '60s. VanGaalen's first two Sub Pop albums were compelling, but Soft Airplane gives him a stronger identity....full text |
| Tinymixtapes |
| Three albums into an already fruitful and prolific career, Chad VanGaalen’s Soft Airplane is easily the strongest, most direct collection of tunes the Calgary, Alberta songwriter has put to tape. His two previous Sub Pop releases, 2004’s Infiniheart and 2006’s Skelliconnection, were wonderful, sprawling home-recorded documents, filled with the sort of simple emotive introspection that any genuine singer-songwriter can employ with ease. However, as he demonstrated on those albums and definitively states here on Soft Airplane, fragile-voiced VanGaalen isn’t your traditional singer-songwriter. For one, these songs are too big. The sheer density of a song like “Inside the Molecules” hardly sounds like one man, but neither does it sound like the product of a full band. Instead, it strikes one as if VanGaalen has engaged the hands of a gaggle of ghosts for backup, injecting the rather straightforward song with a thin film of otherworldliness. Knowing that all of these songs are more or less VanGaalen going at it solo leads one to the conclusion that he’s either an apparition, a necromancer, or an alien, in addition to being an entirely new breed of singer-songwriter. While Infiniheart and Skelliconnection drew inspiration from a myriad array of sources, Soft Airplane seems mostly concerned with death. And while each individual song’s choice of genre and style remains all over the map, this newfound focus leads to a more unified record overall. One would be hard-pressed to call it a cheerful collection, yet VanGaalen often manages to expose a stark beauty in the fleshy undersides of these songs. Take, for instance, album opener “Willow Tree.” The sparse, almost quaint ballad finds VanGaalen, accompanied by accordion and banjo, musing over all the freedom death will allow him and coupling that excitement with a real earnest desire for a Viking funeral at sea. His penchant for this sort of fantastically bizarre imagery is present throughout the majority of the album, whether it be the notion of a neighbor eating his own dog in his basement (“Cries of the Dead”) or a distorted glimpse of a cracked plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mask resting in murky river water and staring right back (“TMNT Mask”). Getting back to genres and song stylings, VanGaalen runs the figurative gamut. “Molten Light,” “City of Electric Light,” and the aforementioned “Willow Tree” have the subdued quality of a sole guitar-wielding troubadour, while songs like “Poisonous Heads” and “Bare Feet on Wet Griptape” exhibit a more explosive rock band sound. Some of the album’s most arresting songs feature VanGaalen’s own askew approximation of electronic dance music. “Phantom Anthills” and “TMNT Mask” boast incredible synthetic arrangements and, while running little risk of burning up any dance floors, remain ample testaments to the good thinking behind incorporating electronics into the mix. The musical element tying these disparate songs together is VanGaalen’s own crackling warble. His delicately powerful singing voice often elevates the songwriting to a whole new plain. As wistfully grim as these songs can be, it’s impossible to mistake the glee that VanGaalen finds in his delirious experimentation. To his credit, the experiments almost always work, producing a slew of palpably profound mantras that reach deep into the boggy, shallow waters of the soul. Soft Airplane’s basement-recorded mastery is equal parts charming and unnerving, and on the whole singularly spectacular....full text |
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