★★★★★
https://www.subpop.com
By JENNIFER KELLY
While working on Shrink Dust, Chad Vangaalen was also elbow-deep in drawing an animated sci-fi feature called Translated Log of Inhabitants. The film's surreal images -- pitched nicely between whimsy and nightmare -- seem to have crept into this fifth full-length...
- blurtonline.com
2014-05-30
★★★★★
At this stage in the game, we sort of know what to expect when Calgary homebody Chad VanGaalen puts out a new album: woozy, spacious, acoustic-based tracks that cut beautiful, melancholy, desert-flower melodies with disturbing background noise; lyrics full of strange imagery that itches at your brain; sinewy vocal harmonies...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2014-05-22
★★★★★
Calgary songwriter Chad VanGaalen has a complicated relationship with beauty. In 2011, he made what I thought was one of the loveliest indie-rock records of the year, but I had a lot of trouble convincing other people of that fact, because he decided to call the damn thing Diaper Island. (Its most tender ballad? Well that would be "Shave My Pussy", of course...
- pitchfork.com
2014-05-02
★★★★★
You know you're going to hear something a little different when the opening lines are "Cut off both my hands and threw them in the sand / Watched them swim away from me like a pair of bloody crabs." From there on in, this fifth album from Chad VanGaalen continues to make its own rules. The Canadian singer is no stranger to being a little different: his early releases consist mainly of demos recorded in his bedroom or makeshift studio; Shrink Dust's more trad recording process does not, however,...
- music.thedigitalfix.com
2014-05-06
★★★★★
On his newest album, Chad VanGaalen continues his multi-layered musical exploration of his own mind, this time through a sci-fi/ fantasy lens. The lyrics found on Shrink Dust are about what you expect from the album's cover image--death, monsters, dismembered hands--but it's clear that VanGaalen's having fun with this album, letting his imagination guide the content even while his music reaches some of the most accessible points of his body of work so far...
- filtermagazine.com
2014-04-30
★★★★★
Chad VanGaalen is a family man, but artistically seems to be haunted by inner demons. He has two bands with his kids. A hardcore band called Crocodile Teeth & The Snugglers and a techno band called Banana Bread. How awesome is that? But if you watch his self-animated videos and listen to the lyrics of songs like "Molten Light" ("As she watched their bodies burn, she whispered, 'I found you and I killed you'") you might think, "holy hell I hope this guy never procreates and raises demon spawn...
- www.punknews.org
2014-04-30
★★★★★
As Chad VanGaalen awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic monster. At least that's what happened according to the best track off this prodigiously talented and prolific Albertan singer's latest record, Shrink Dust. The song, fittingly titled "Monster", is a dazzling window of world creation that begins with the line: "Ripping my eyelids a little bit wider are two prying hands that grew out from my shoulders, and I can't explain why, but it's...
- consequenceofsound.net
2014-04-30
★★★★★
To step into Chad VanGaalen's world is to go through the looking-glass: up is down, black is white, and when you hack off your own appendages, they'll swim blithely away "like a pair of bloody crabs". So far, so... enchanting? Yeah, and the rest. The Canadian freak-folk savant's fifth LP (under his own name; he's released countless others under assorted guises) is a partial score to a self-directed sci-fi movie, but for all their aesthetic weirdness, there's something deeply relatable about the...
- www.nme.com
2014-04-28
★★★★★
Chad VanGaalen has long been a bastion of weirdo, Canadian art rock. But on his fifth LP, , the multi-talented avant-pop songwriter can be found exploring a more refined sonic palette. Concurrently inspired by his long-awaited spaghetti western, sci-fi odyssey , as well as his recent interest in the work of country-fried recording artists like Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, is an album with maximalist thematic potential but minimalist instrumentation...
- exclaim.ca
2014-04-26