“The UK… I’m not saying it’s bad…” The Line Of Best Fit meets Chad VanGaalen

The drinkers in the downstairs bar of Brighton’s The Hope this evening are pretty much what you’d expect for a Monday night in the seaside city. Groups of arty looking students and a few young-dressing 30-somethings line the bar, and given the quiet atmosphere, you’d be forgiven for not realising there is a band about to play. Upstairs though, past the eager doorman with felt-tip pen in hand, ready to scrawl on wrists in return for tickets, the tiny space is deafened by the screeching guitars of a sound check, and tonight’s main entertainment, Chad VanGaalen and band, stand around casually, clutching beers, ready for the evening.

The venue’s not what you’d call glamourous, and the room looks like it would struggle to contain 100 people, but although the band have handled much more impressive spaces, this kind of place, VanGaalen tells TLOBF, is much more in the band’s comfort zone.

“This is a perfect sized venue for us” he continues, leading on into an alley way behind the venue for the interview, his tall, smiling figure towering up into the grey seaside sky. “We played a couple of crazy festivals on this tour, and it’s just, I don’t know if I’m down with that. I’d rather play two days in one place in a smaller venue. The bigger venues… I really don’t know how to play that type of stage in general… We did this huge festival in Croatia, and Matt was like, way over there and Monty’s all the way over there…” He gestures as he talks, pointing down the road to emphasize the distance between himself and his bandmates, drawing our attention to an elderly woman who eyes us, as if we’re plotting world domination, rather than conducting an interview. We turn away quickly. “…and you’re just kinda floating around in nowhere. It’s hard. We like small venues way better, and you can like hang out with people afterwards and, I don’t know, it seems a bit more normal to me.”

Later on, as the band take to the stage, VanGaalen’s enjoyment of playing an intimate venue like this is clear. During the interim between the support act and his own performance, he stands at the back of the room, chatting with whoever approaches him, and heckling the support band friendlily. When it’s time for him to take to the stage, he pushes gently through the relaxed crowd, smiling at anyone who meets his eye, and stands front and centre, quietly confident.

But he should be confident. This is nearly the end of the band’s Europe-sprawling tour, covering Germany, Croatia, the Czech Republic and most places in between. “It took us a little bit to kinda get our shit together” he reminisces in his Canadian drawl, when asked how he feels the tour’s been going. “But it’s going good, I think we sound like a band now”. And as we watch them later, sound like a band they do, powering through their heavier material with a raw intensity that is not always so easy to find, before stripping everything right down to impassioned, stark melodies.

“We’re just playing rock music, so doesn’t need to be crazy” VanGaalen tells us referring to the size of the venue, and although ‘rock music’ is roughly where you’d place the band’s music from tonight’s performance, “just playing rock music” seems almost self-derogatory. ‘Shave My Pussy’, the first song of the set, is a very different song from the parody you might expect from the name, and not exactly your classic rock anthem: VanGaalen’s voice and lone ukulele fill the silenced room with heartfelt, affecting tones, and from this point on, the crowd’s mesmerized.

“But touring Europe is pretty different” he admits “I mean, not the UK, the UK’s like the States… I think the smaller places in Europe they’re more like ‘Oh thank you for coming here, no one fucking comes here’, and they’ll put you up in their house, make you a home cooked meal, stuff like that, everywhere.” The UK though, we’re told, is not as hospitable. “Yeah I mean the UK… I’m not saying it’s bad…” He tails off somewhat before continuing, apparently debating with himself whether to spare our feelings. “But it’s just, I think there’s way more artists that are touring, so they’re just like ‘Fuck you, we’ve got an awesome band here, and tomorrow night we’ve got another awesome band, and then after that it’s fucking PJ Harvey, go fuck yourself, here’s a baguette’, you know what I mean?” Not entirely sure that we do, actually Chad, but anyway…

Moving on swiftly, VanGaalen also explains how having a family has affected the tour. “I’ve got two kids” he says “and it definitely puts a new spin on touring. It’s hard communicating with my family, especially from Europe. ‘Cause of the time change – my daughters go to bed at seven-thirty-ish, so usually I’m all drunk and crazy after a show, trying to phone my daughters who are just getting ready to go to bed.” For a second we’re treated to a rather brilliant impersonation from VanGaalen of his drunk, ‘crazy’ self. “Daddy loves you!” he slurs, falling against the wall beside us, eyes rolling.

But even after this entertaining demonstration, it’s hard to imagine what this big, gentle man getting all crazy would actually entail, and as he seems reluctant to say anymore than “Yeah, I’d say it gets pretty crazy. We need some sleep tonight.” and grin, we’ll have to take his word for it, and move on to talking about recording in his new home studio.

“The first record I recorded there was Women’s Public Strain… Before that it was just a basement bedroom suite, so it was super small. The first Women record was recorded there and six dudes in a basement suite trying to record is fucking miserable. We were all sandwiched together, bumping into each other, which can be kinda cool… It’s not like it was bad, it’s just a different kind of recording now. With the new studio, I can have all the drums set up and the amps and have them mic-ed all the time. Before I’d have to break the drums down, and then break all the mics down and then re-mic the guitar amps and do a guitar take and then the drum take wasn’t good from before ‘cause now the guitar sounds better, and we rip down the guitar amps, set up the drums, re-mic… – It’s fucking crazy…”

This change away from such lo-fi recording, has also meant a change in the sound of VanGaalen’s music, we’re told, and a possible explanation for his (rather wonderful) newest album, Diaper Island, being hailed as his ‘most sonically cohesive to date’. “All that lends itself to more dynamics, almost.” He continues. “Because with a bigger space now I’m leaving the microphones set up in a pattern that I’ve tweaked, and although, maybe it sounds better, every song was just completely different in the other space, and now it’s just laziness takes over in the bigger space and you’re just like ‘ah, I’ve found this sound’, and then three records later, you realise all your records sound the same. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing… I just stole all the sounds off the Women record and used them for this album. I left everything set up so it’s all pretty much exactly the same.” Cheeky.

But it’s unlikely you’ll hear anyone else accusing VanGaalen’s records of all sounding the same. The man’s also known for making his own instruments to be used on his records. “But on this record ” he tells us “I used some homemade clarinets and some homemade harps, so it wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary. Soft Airplane had way more kind of weirdo, circuit bent, strange sounds on it, and this record has a lot more melodic, classic style instruments… I was just pretty broke, and at the time I had access to a lot of scarp material from a wood shop. In Canada we throw away amazing building materials, so there’s like PVC, aluminium, titanium, woods of all sorts… I had access to a wood-shop at the time too, so I could just build the stuff for free and not have to spend two-hundred dollars on a clarinet.”

But VanGaalen’s talents extent further than his music, whether the guitar sounds are stolen or not. He’s also a renowned visual artist. Something, he tells us, he feels more comfortable in than his musical career. “I’ve just been doing it for longer, and I’m way better at it than I am at making music, so it’s just easier, more satisfying. I think videos is probably where I’m going to go. Just animating videos, and working with bands. The last video I did was for myself…” and you can see that here:

“And the one before that was for J Mascis. Those are the only ones I’ve done this year… But before that: Love Is Laughter, Holy Fuck… Guster. A bunch of bands. It’s just easier for me to work from home, and it’s a mixture of the two things, music and visual art.”

This isn’t though, we enquire hurriedly, to imply that he’ll be slowing down his own musical out put? “I’m always recording” He replies, “That’s the advantage of having a home studio. There’s going to be lots of records coming out this year. There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve finished since last year. There’s probably eight records that haven’t come out yet.” Eight!? “Yeah, I think so. I’m sort of getting more internet savvy. It takes a long time for labels to put stuff out properly… So now it’s just like why can’t I put this up on the internet for everybody for free?” They’ll be no shortage of VanGaalen’s music to be had then. “I think the B-sides are going to come up pretty soon… There’s like eighty-five B-sides… I mean there’s probably like a hundred and fifty real B-sides, but half of it was total fucking garbage. There’s like eighty-ish songs that that I’d be OK with not having mastered and just put up.”

And if so far unreleased ‘Cut My Hair’, which VanGaalen has played at various shows, and treats us to a lovely rendition of tonight, is anything to go by, these B-Sides are likely to be pretty damn good. In fact, the whole set which the band run through tonight, including a mix of newer material from Diaper Island, songs from previous albums, and stuff we’ve not heard of before, consistently intoxicates the crowd into silence. Broken only by laughter when VanGaalen swats a fly energetically, and proudly shows the crowd the remains on his huge hands, his charisma shining, alongside his unnervingly white, canadian teeth. Aside from ‘Cut My Hair’, ‘City of Electric Light’ and ‘Replace Me’ stand out as highlights, and although most of the crowd stand very static throughout, there’s a definite sense that everyone here is witnessing something pretty special. VanGaalen’s right, venues like this are perfect for them.