 cult figure for the hundreds of songs recorded in his Calgary bedroom, Chad Vangaalen this week releases his first album for a major label, Infiniheart on SubPop. The album pares down Vangaalen’s canon to nineteen pretty, quiet tracks about middle-of-the-night prank calls, the color of blood, the refraction of light, and being trapped underground or under the covers. So many of the songs are about falling asleep, waking up, or dreaming, that it’s hard not to identify the Neil Young-esque singer with bed, even if you weren’t already physically attracted to him.
The crushy-worthy 6’5″ indie musician and animator also happens to be charmingly eccentric. He smokes lots of pot, has something called a “migraine aura” and believes in ghosts. He’s performed a stupid human trick on David Letterman, and he and his friends like to do things like wait for one of them to fall asleep, create a beat, and then wake the sleeper up and force him to freestyle. Between his social life, his charming “beeen” and oout” Canadianisms and his genius girlfriend, he seems to be having more fun than should be humanly possible in Alberta. — Ada Calhoun
What’s that crackling noise?
There’s an electrical storm here. It’s kind of like a thunderstorm with a lot of lightning. It fucks with the power lines.
What’s Calgary like otherwise?
It’s pretty dry here. We’re really close to the Rocky Mountains, right on the edge of the foothills. It’s really nice here. It gets really, really cold in the wintertime and really, really hot in the summertime.
Have you ever wanted to move to a bigger city?
Yes and no. I’ve traveled a lot, and hung out in lots of different cities, but I have a lot of family here and I go to the Rocky Mountains quite a bit and that’s sort of what keeps my brain in check, so I can’t imagine myself surviving very long in a big city.
What are you doing besides music right now?
I’ve been working pretty hard on some animations. I have a bunch of shorts. I’m trying to compile about half an hour to forty-five minutes worth of animations that I can put together on a DVD. Up until now I’ve just been doing the animations on cells, and now I’ve switched over to computers and it’s been quite a pain in the ass. That goes for music as well. I’ve moved away from four-tracks and I’m trying to understand computers now and it’s totally killing everything that was there. So I have to get really inspired to learn the ins-and-outs or it all goes back to analog, which is probably going to happen.
Does it change the way you think? Moving from typewriters to computers totally changed the way a lot of people wrote.
Yeah. I’m just sort of learning about programs now, so it seems like it’s up to the programmers to make programs that would be easy for you to make the changeover. And as far as animation goes, I’m working with a really good program right now that was made by people who were in that old-school mentality. It’s meant to sort of feel more like cell animating. They’ve made it easy so I’ve been able to get into that pretty quickly. But as far as the sound stuff goes, it’s not the same at all. It’s really been killing my motivation.
Do you have similar themes in your animation and your music?
They’re pretty much exactly the same. I try to keep in mind that I’m working with something that can really facilitate the surreal. I try to combine as many animal parts on one organism as I can.
I like the idea of “facilitating the surreal.” Are your more surreal songs inspired by dreams, or do you read lots of science fiction?
To tell you the truth, I don’t really read at all.
Really, why?
I have a hard time reading, actually. Not as far as understanding what I’m reading, but for a while I had this thing called a migraine aura, which was like some sort of dyslexia brought on by reading. I kept falling asleep fifteen minutes into what I’d be reading, even if I really loved it. I just sort of gave up on it, and I stick to comic books. But it kind of sucks.
But, yeah, I take a lot of stuff from my dreams. I used to have my studio in my bedroom, so it made it easy to get up and put my ideas down after having dreams.
And I used to have a hip-hop project where we would just get unreasonably stoned and then let one of us fall asleep and the other two of us would set up beats and headphones and stuff and then we’d wake the one person up who was sleeping and they’d have to freestyle straight out of their subconscious.
That’s hilarious.
It sounds cooler than it actually is. A lot of the freestyles are pretty lame. They were totally scroggy.
Is it true you did a stupid human trick on Letterman where your friend crawled around you without touching the floor?
[Laughs] Yeah. You found the trick online?
Just a description of it.
I wish the trick were online, ’cause it’s a bad-ass trick.
So who’s on your answering machine? Do you live with a girlfriend?
Yeah, that’s Sara.
How long have you been together?
Two years. She’s actually doing a double PhD right now in law and philosophy.
Oh my goodness.
Totally ridiculous. But it’s good, because we both work out of the house. If we didn’t work out of the house, it’d be pretty hard to find the time to do anything. But it’s kind of crazy because I’m going to do an artist residency out in eastern Canada in the fall so I’m going to be away for most of those five weeks. That’s going to suck. We moved in together after, like, three months of dating or something crazy.
How did you meet?
We actually met in an art gallery. I’m a Frisbee fanatic. I carry Frisbees everywhere I go. I was at a friend’s opening and there were all these pretentious art snobs. Then I saw this beautiful girl walking around, smiling and being like, “Hey, why isn’t anybody being nice here?” So she came over and was like, “Hey, you guys are playing Frisbee?” And we were like, “Well, we’re not right now, but we’re going to in a couple of seconds.” She just followed us out, and that was that.
That’s practical advice people can take away: Bring a Frisbee to the art opening.
It’s true. Get the frick outta the gallery.
Everybody keeps comparing you to Neil Young and Beck. Do you enjoy that or is it driving you insane?
Oh, I don’t really care. I don’t understand the Beck thing, really. The Neil Young thing originally kind of bugged me, because I never really listened to Neil Young and I thought he was just this old cooter, burnt-out hippie. Then my friend Adam bought me a bunch of his records and I started listening to them slowly but surely and now he’s definitely one of my favorite artists. I think it’s the grandma voice that sort of pins me down.
Did you know that Beck is a scientologist?
That’s creepy. I don’t really know too much about Beck. I’ve heard his stuff on the radio and it seems pretty weird for mainstream stuff. Isn’t Tom Cruise a scientologist?
Yes.
So, that’s crazy. It’s Beck and Tom Cruise hanging out.
Do you have any cult or religious tendencies?
I smoke a lot of pot.
Rastafarianism?
I don’t know if I’d go as far as that. A lot of my songs are about just not knowing anything, so I feel pretty lost as far as any sort of religion goes, but I definitely believe there’s stuff out there. Like, I believe in ghosts.
Does your house have ghosts?
My house is pretty ghost-free. But I’ve felt crazy stuff going on. I didn’t really believe in ghosts until a couple of years ago, a close friend of mine passed away and I was really thinking about it a lot and I was working at this vineyard at the time and had some crazy experiences that changed my mind. It was like thirty-eight degrees Celsius, which is really hot. Fahrenheit-wise, I don’t know what it’d be, like 120 degrees?
I think more like 100.
Yeah, but really hot. And I felt like I was in another realm and then everything got really, really cold in my body and it was just really, really strange. I can’t really explain it. And then later on that night, I was like, what now? Is he going to hang out? Is he going to be bugging me all the time? I started talking to the people I was working for, this Swiss couple. Their father really believes in ghosts and he was like, “Oh, you just have to wait around.” And then that night there were crazy Northern Lights. Have you ever seen the Northern Lights?
Yes. They’re amazing.
So then I just said, “Okay, Ivan. I’ll say goodbye to you now, since I never got a chance to say goodbye.” And as soon as I said goodbye, the Northern Lights just stopped. Like somebody flipped a switch. That part could maybe be coincidental, but the whole cold breeze thing . . . I can’t really explain it in words. I run the risk of sounding like a cheeseball.
It sounds like a good experience.
It changed my mind about a lot of things. You know, it just doesn’t really make sense that something could just leave, whether it’s energy dissipating or whether it’s spirits, or . . . I don’t really know anything about anything, but I’m more open-minded than I was about that kind of stuff.
In another interview, you talked about choices in life and how, as you get older, you’re in danger of having a boring future with no romance. Do you still think that’s true?
I think I was talking about the state of North America right now. I know a lot of beautiful people, and I’m lucky that I’m surrounded by a lot of life, but generally speaking, we gave up on romance a long time ago, a couple decades ago.
What do you mean by giving up on romance?
Just giving up on your dreams. Especially working with kids, it’s really sad to see it happening so early on. It seems like kids these days are more or less rushed to be adults and be involved in whatever’s going on and the media’s pulling them into that at such an early age. And they’re totally into it; they want to be a part of it. Video games and virtual stuff is taking the place of what used to be a little bit healthier. Boys especially have always wanted to kill stuff: that’s not anything new. But it just seems like the way it’s being offered to themit’s too real. When they go home, they’re virtually killing people and then walking through their blood and walking around leaving bloody footprints everywhere. And then these parents are coming up to me and wondering why their children are so aggressive and crazy. And I’m like, well, I didn’t grow up with any television. It seems so crazy to me that people let their children be raised by the television. Oh, I sound like a grandpa.
Do you want to have kids?
Yeah, I’m going to have kids for sure.
Do you have a number in mind?
Whatever comes out. Whatever feels right. For a long time I didn’t want to have kids, just because of how strange it feels. But it seems like all the good people aren’t having kids because of whatever reasons population or the collective consciousness being a little insane but it seems like all those good people overthink it and don’t have kids, and all the crazy wackos have a million kids. Wait, that sounds pretentious: not that I’m not a wacko. I’m sure a lot of people think I’m a wacko.
I heard somewhere that you like [experimental musician] Glen Branca.
Yeah, I love his stuff. It’s pretty powerful. It’s strange, because originally the songs on Infiniheart started off as all-instrumental. I think there was only one song with vocals in it, and then Ian [Russell] was like, “No, give me more stuff with vocals.” I’m more into music that’s experimental and not so sing-songy. But now everybody thinks I’m like, this songwriter or something.
Do you have an objection to that?
I never even really thought of myself as a musician until people started telling me that’s what I was. I mean, usually I draw every day and that’s mostly what I do draw stuff and do animation. So it’s kind of strange when you get pushed into this different idea of yourself in your own mind. I love music as much as I love anything, so that’s fine, but it’ll be awesome once I get these animations out there, because I think my drawings are way cooler than my sound stuff.
You’ve said you’re considering a teaching career. But it seems like everybody’s saying you’re on the road to indie stardom do you really not put much stock in that?
That’s never really what I’ve been excited about in my life. I think it’s great, and if I can put something positive out there that a lot of people are going to hear, I’m going to take advantage of it, but as far as true satisfaction goes: my mom is a teacher of the hearing-impaired. I’ve spent probably the past eight years doing musical workshops with these deaf kids, and that’s what really gives me the ultimate satisfaction in the world. I was working at these two schools, one was a French immersion school and the other was in the ghetto. These kids get only like a half an hour out of the week to play music and stuff. A half an hour’s not even enough time to do anything.
Teaching is noble.
And beyond that, it’s just shitloads of fun. n°
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