JOHN VANDERSLICE - Dagger Beach

Cime di alberi che si perdono verso la sommità del cielo. Scogliere che si gettano a capofitto nell’Oceano. Camminare, un passo dopo l’altro; camminare alla ricerca del proprio volto. Fino a ritrovare nel silenzio il suono della propria voce.

John Vanderslice ha passato un anno ad avventurarsi nel profondo dei boschi della California: uno zaino e una tenda per affrontare in perfetta solitudine la natura selvaggia. E per rimettere in movimento la vita dopo la fine di una relazione. “Dagger Beach” è il diario di questa rinascita, che ha i tratti di un ritorno alle origini.

“In the deep dark woods, alone with my fears/ Under the jackpine the sky was galvanized.” The oblique melody of “Raw Wood” reveals itself with a tremor of unease. “While I was walking, listening to records over and over, I started to become obsessed with music again,” Vanderslice recalls. Listening thus becomes the first stage of the journey.

There are three albums Vanderslice can't stop listening to: “Have One On Me” by Joanna Newsom, “The Natural Bridge” by Silver Jews and “The King Of Limbs” by Radiohead. “The first two reminded me how crucial lyrics can be, how your experience of a record can evolve and shift as you slowly decode a deep, complex piece of writing. “The King Of Limbs” showed me how powerful linear songwriting can be, when subtle changes in form and repeated motifs gradually morph into something completely different”.

“I set up in wildcat camp, just me and the owls and the bats”. In the spirit of freedom found on solitary trails, new songs started to take shape. “I refined the lyrics while walking, working on the songs in my head”. A songwriting process entirely new to Vanderslice, which led him to explore new paths. The outlines of the tracks become less defined, the structure built around rhythmic frameworks that reflect the influence of Radiohead (while the Silver Jews get an explicit tribute with “Song For David Berman”, dedicated to Silver Jews).

Al ritorno a San Francisco, per Vanderslice è subito chiaro che l’esperienza che ha vissuto richiede una dimensione più libera per essere portata a compimento: il suo studio di registrazione, l’ormai celebre Tiny Telephone, diventa così anche un’etichetta discografica, pronta a dare alla luce “Dagger Beach” con il supporto di una raccolta di fondi su Kickstarter.

Dopo la felice parentesi chamber-folk di “White Wilderness”, Vanderslice torna alle cesellature sintetiche del passato, affiancato da Jason Slota alle percussioni. Tastiere dai riverberi alieni, ritmiche sfuggenti, miraggi evanescenti di moog: dalle rifrazioni di “Damage Control” all’avvitarsi nervoso di “Gaslight”, i brani di “Dagger Beach” puntano ad atmosfere “più svincolate, più strane e più libere”, per usare ancora le parole di Vanderslice. Atmosfere che (proprio come nei suoi primi album) sfociano in una coppia di fluttuanti interludi, cui si aggiunge la strumentale “Song For The Landlords Of Tiny Telephone”, firmata dal violoncellista Shawn Alpay.

The songs' personality, however, ends up feeling less sharply defined, scattering into detours and digressions where details overtake the overall vision. It's no coincidence, then, that the most convincing moments are the enchanted delicacy of the arpeggios on “Song For Dana Lok”, the ragged edges of “How The West Was Won” and the marimba accents of “Sleep It Off”, which hew closer to Vanderslice's typical songwriting.

For Vanderslice, “Dagger Beach” isn't so much a “break-up record” as a “put-me-the-fuck-back-together record”: not an epilogue, but a fresh start. “Raw Wood” announces it right away: “One day the pain will pass on from me to you/ It will then be clear if it’s really true:/ I’ve moved on”.

Of course, the bittersweet aftertaste of the literary-romantic saga of “Harlequin Press” doesn't hide a trace of resentment. But all that's left, on the electronic trails of “North Coast Rep”, is the off-screen gaze of a photograph in which one no longer recognizes oneself. “Dagger Beach” faces the first step toward recovery. The hardest step, even when it remains uncertain.

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09/06/2013