dear sarah shu

-Hello you beautiful bloodshot eyes.
How are you doing today?
-I'm on my second diet coke and third cup of tea
and it's only 8am.

grrr....

While leaning up against the counter in Jay and Jaxxie's kitchen on Saturday night, I glanced up into the corner of the room and saw a framed poster for a benefit show. One name from the roster stood out to me and with a blazing piece of heartache in my hand (also called a buttershot), I couldn't get John Vanderslice's steady dream of a voice out of my head for the rest of the night.

John Vanderslice. His lyrics are beautiful cryptic little stories. Sometimes it feels to me that as he's singing, he's across the street from me, observing and thinking to himself, wishing, wanting, hoping that these thoughts could instantly travel through air and into my head. And here I recieve them. And love them. His latest album, Pixel Revolt (released on Barsuk in August of 2005), is filled with letters and conversations, observations of humanity and it's tendencies. His wit is playful and honest, yet full of imagination and sometimes sorrow. I love him best when he takes these everyday situations, such as changing jobs or losing a friend's pet, and turns them into a warning, an adventure, a well wish, a love song to something that does not exist:

dear sarah shu

dear sarah shu,
I leave for you
all I knew about this job
on microcassette for further review

what it meant to me
how you’ll make it dear, hopefully
it’s dangerous here
yes it’s dangerous here

peer round corners with dental mirrors,
heed the threats, taking cautionary measures,
in the end, it is love
you’ll have to learn to survive

dear sarah shu,
I leave for you
all I knew about this job
on palmcorder for future review

your office will flood every night,
it’s water, don’t try to fight it
suspend all your files using
my system of hanging wires

break apart what I connected
show what I only suggested
’cause in the end it was love
I had to learn to survive

picture me by the window sill
wrapped in copper wire, my autumn sleeves,
with torn up directives
spread round the floor like shoreham leaves

picture me locking office door, now
kneeling down on the floor,
screaming: “protection,
I can make it, I can make it!”

peer round corners with dental mirrors,
heed the threats, taking cautionary measures,
but in the end, it is love
you’ll have to learn to survive

so long, sarah shu,
farewell to you,
stay calm, stay sweet,
regards from the other side of the teeth

break apart what I connected
show what I only suggested
’cause in the end it was love
we had to learn to survive

The imagery is dramatic, yet there seems to be no seriousness to it at all. In contrast, another of my favorite songs on this album, dead slate pacific, is a despondent dream of a song, containing rivers of quiet and pain:

at my low point
I went to a professional
he asked me some questions
sent me to a doctor

there’s a moment there,
when you’re under a doctor’s care
when you’re safe and hopeful

punched in the code
ran up the stairwell
he asked more questions
gave me celexa

that’s when I really knew
the only thing standing between
me and that long rope over a carpenter’s beam
was you

I went off the pills
bought my ticket
I used to think
there was nothing between us
just 6,000 miles of
the dead, slate pacific

but on that united flight
in a white hot panic I
sank to the bottom of the sea

my countless horrible creatures
complicated undersea secrets
if I didn’t go diving there
with a spear gun, knife and flare
how would I ever make it through

that’s when I really knew
the only thing standing between
me and that long rope hung on a carpenter’s beam
was you

I've been following John Vanderslice since the late 90's...(it feels really weird to say that, as if it's so terribly long ago). MK Ultra opened for Sunny Day Real Estate on the SubPop How It Feels Tour (Mississippi Nights, St. Louis). That night, that show, changed the way I had thought about music up to that point. And it wasn't just that I finally GOT the dischord and timing and distortion of Enigk and CO and the slowing mapped out guitar work and sarcastic tones of John. It was the entire experience. I know I've written of it before. The strange mixture of the crowd, the droning wave of heads and hands as the first notes trickled through the speakers, the energy bouncing from soul to soul, the dark and brilliant charge of light through every phrase. I remember this. I remember how much it affected me and my twenty-year-old heart.

http://www.johnvanderslice.com
http://www.myspace.com/johnvanderslice
http://www.mkultra.com

The JV's diary from the Subpop tour:
http://www.mkultra.com/html/tour.html
I love the entry about St. Louis, February 25th.