AEM078 Galapaghost

So sings Casey Chan­dler in A-side “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” and if you’ve grad­u­ated from col­lege within the past 3 years you’ll under­stand exactly what he’s talk­ing about because you’re a part of it.  Chances are you can’t find a job and if you can it’s doing some­thing com­pletely unre­lated to what­ever it is you wanted to do before the econ­omy shat itself and spend­ing every last ounce of effort try­ing to con­vince your­self that it doesn’t suck that much.  All you you learned in four years of col­lege is how to make a grav­ity bong out of a water bot­tle and enough about eco­nom­ics to real­ize that our national debt will be financed with the social secu­rity you’ll get to never see a dime of.  Know­ing then what you know now, maybe you wouldn’t have deemed a degree in phi­los­o­phy, polit­i­cal sci­ence, art his­tory or what­ever worth four years of your prime and a pile of debt.

The one-man-band is thriv­ing these days.  In this dig­i­tal age any­body with a few hun­dred bucks and a lit­tle patience can pro­duce an album in his bed­room and sell it on iTunes.  And dur­ing these lean years that makes a lot of sense.  Why out­source if you can do it all your­self?  The one man band is eco­nom­i­cal and stream­lined.  And so maybe Gala­paghost, a one man band fea­tur­ing nobody but Chan­dler and him­self, is his nod to the “lost gen­er­a­tion” to which he belongs.  But for a mem­ber of the lost gen­er­a­tion, Chan­dler seems to know exactly what he’s doing.  A recent grad­u­ate of the Music Pro­duc­tion Pro­gram at SUNY Pur­chase, Chan­dler now spends his days pro­duc­ing the music he writes and per­forms.  Your par­ents told you that you were crazy to major in music pro­duc­tion but don’t you feel smart now?  Where would a more con­ven­tional major have got­ten you any­way…  Of course, tech­nol­ogy aside, to make an album by one­self requires tal­ent and ver­sa­til­ity.  I’ve observed that in bands there’s usu­ally one per­son with all the ideas, some bril­liant and some ter­ri­ble,  one per­son with the per­spec­tive to dis­tin­guish between them and the focus to put the good ones into action, and maybe a few other peo­ple who just stand around and play their instru­ments.  When you’re a one man band, you’ve got to be inspired but you also need to know how to get down to busi­ness.  Chandler’s got some good ideas and the capa­bil­ity to see them through from start to finish.

Chan­dler describes his com­po­si­tions as, “sad yet hope­ful folk songs.” Actu­ally both cuts off this 7-inch are less folk influ­enced than the major­ity of his mate­r­ial, but the label may still apply.  What these two songs share with folk is the power to express nat­u­rally and with­out pre­ten­tion the ups and downs of life.  “I want to make you cry from sad­ness and then cry from hap­pi­ness by the end of each song, basi­cally…” Chan­dler adds, although he’s quick to fol­low up, “just kid­ding.” To be fair, no song has ever made me cry from hap­pi­ness or sad­ness but cer­tain songs, Chandler’s included, have the power to manip­u­late me emo­tion­ally, to change my mood, and to inspire reflection.

“Lost Gen­er­a­tion” is the title track off of Chandler’s first EP.  It’s a beau­ti­ful clash of dis­mal sub­ject mat­ter and peppy rhythms and fun tex­tures.  The jan­gling tam­bourine, clink­ing ukulele, lush har­monies vaguely rem­i­nis­cent of The Beach Boys, and clap­ping hands seem down­right fes­tive.  Maybe it’s just a sub­con­scious asso­ci­a­tions I make when I hear the ukulele but for some rea­son I envi­sion this song being per­formed on a beach in Hawaii.  Of course, the lyrics tell a far dif­fer­ent story.  “Hold­ing our breath for an oppor­tu­nity well there’s none left,” Chan­dler sings. In the cho­rus, the topic turns  to love.  Some­how these themes of a hope­less econ­omy and a love based entirely on hope—“in in a per­fect world we would be”—become inter­twined, and I even get the impres­sion that one could be a metaphor for the other, although I couldn’t say which is which.  At any rate, you don’t need money to dance and   “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” makes that abun­dantly clear.

Chan­dler recorded his first EP Lost Gen­er­a­tion in a cou­ple of years back when he was toy­ing with the term “ukulindie rock” as a way to describe his music and indeed ukulele fea­tures very promi­nently on the album.  How­ever, since then he’s broad­ened his reach a bit and weaned him­self off that genre  clas­si­fi­ca­tion.  “ I didn’t want to be always mak­ing the uke my prin­ci­ple song writ­ing instru­ment because I don’t want it to become a gim­mick for me or any­thing. I only ever use it to enhance my songs, never because I’m cre­at­ing an image.” It’s a fair dis­tinc­tion.  “The main rea­son I love the uke,” he adds, “is because it bright­ens and dis­guises songs that would oth­er­wise be too dark for my lik­ing with­out it.”

B-side “Human Unkind” is one of those songs.  You can prob­a­bly glean from the title that it’s going to be oppres­sively dis­mal, and the lyrics deliver as adver­tised.  But because the main riff is played on ukulele instead of, say, the gui­tar, the entire song sounds lighter.  It also helps that the arrange­ment is fairly sparse.  With­out drums to drown things out, each instru­ment can be heard as dis­tinct which is espe­cially nice because “Human Unkind” is full of intri­ca­cies like the small crashes that occur on the upbeat and ornate gui­tar fig­ures.  My favorite moment is at around 1:57 when the pro­gres­sion unex­pect­edly resolves on a major chord and Chandler’s angelic har­monies kick in like a ray of sun­light pierc­ing the clouds.  A sim­i­lar moment occurs at around 3:17 and by that point it feels a lit­tle like a cho­rus, although the res­o­lu­tion is so brief that I hes­i­tate to call it so.  Per­haps refrain is a bet­ter choice.  Unlike “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” which exhibits strong pop sen­si­bil­i­ties, “Human Unkind” fol­lows a more exper­i­men­tal form.

Gala­paghost is weath­er­ing the reces­sion quite well, and may in fact expand soon.  Chan­dler has begun per­form­ing at clubs and bars around NYC (where he lives) and plans to gather a band so that he may repro­duce the sounds on his record­ings in a live setting.

Nate Green­berg

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