Eventually This Future’s Gonna Swallow You

Chad VanGaalen @ Bowery Ballroom, 9/17/2005
I Miss You Like I Miss You / Wind Dogs / Echo Train / Dancing In The Dark / I Wake Up / Blood Machine / After The Afterlife / Clinically Dead / Somewhere I Know There Is Nothing / Graveyard

Chad VanGaalen “Echo Train” – At a time when the shrug and/or cringe-inducing Devendras, Obersts, Iron & Wines, and Sufjans of the world are flourishing, it’s just my luck that the one indie troubadour that I’m fond of is the one who is met with widespread critical indifference and lukewarm sales. I’m out of step with the needs of the indie nation. Or maybe it’s just not the right time for this record. Infiniheart is a lonely, morbid album that sounds like Neil Young shivvering with a 4-track on the tundra. These are not summer jams. This is barely even music for the autumn. But that didn’t matter at the Bowery Ballroom, as a handful of eager fans crowded the front of the stage and Chad played about a third of the record along with some strong new tunes and a lean, spirited cover of Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark” that made me recognize the Bruce-isms in the rest of the material for the first time. (Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

Holopaw “3-Shy-Cubs” – Holopaw were a pleasant surprise in a live setting. Much of Quit +/Or Fight! is almost too cozy for its own good, even if their clever rhythm section keeps things from getting too hazy and predictable. Led by a charismatic vocalist who looks absolutely nothing at all like how you might guess (picture an older, craggier version of Michael Stipe after a career in the Marines), their songs snapped and popped full of life, even the ones with excessive drowsy lap steel. (Click here to buy it from Sub Pop.)

ALSO: Please go off and read my longform interview with Carl Newman from the New Pornographers. It’s my very first feature for Pitchfork!