John Vanderslice
Time Travel Is Lonely
Barsuk Records
Vanderslice is a tireless worker, which brings us to his second album,
Time Travel Is Lonely, completed late in 2001 and released on
Barsuk. It's a sheer masterpiece of lush, perfectly orchestrated experimental pop. As with any
Vanderslice project, it's a little conceptual, its songs loosely based on the life of Jesse, a U.S. geologist and computer programmer living alone in Antarctica, whose story is told in a series of letters in the album's liner notes. The songs themselves, as you might expect, are astonishingly rich, both in lyrical and sonic content; you'll find yourself turning a melody over in your mind, recalling the feel of a particular texture, or pondering a certain idea long after you've listened to the music. The wonderful aspect of
Vanderslice's material is that you can
hear everything, every nuance and quirk; there are never muddy, barely audible tracks buried in the mix. This gives his music a revelatory, sparklingly pristine complexity. Listen for instance to the way the trumpet and strings join
Vanderslice's voice and guitar on the lovely "My Old Flame" or the intricate instrumental intimacy of the brief "Interlude 3." This stuff isn't just ambitious, it's fabulously executed.
Jesse Ashlock
last updated:
05/02/02
