The Road Less Traveled or The Path Home?

We're all on this weird planet with a different journey

Oct 29, 2024

Walking into Bub and Grandma’s, a beautiful (and delicious) Eastside LA deli on Sunday night, I was greeted with one of my favorite jazz standards, Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father.”

My good friend, Daniel Ellsworth, was playing piano as part of the dinner service, filling the night with warmth, familiar melodies, and the comforting hum of conversation. I couldn’t shake that Horace Silver tune, even as I left, his music lingering in my mind as I drove home. On my way, my partner Lydia and I were discussing Elliott Smith—well, his music on the stereo—and she asked, “If he were still around, what would he have done?”

“The same as he had always done.” Yet, even as this was not the whole answer, it spoke to a specific connection between the artistic natures of Silver and Smith, respectively: in their own way, both artists kept a musical language. Each of these masters, in his own right, contributed a somewhat distinctive voice to something that came prior to them—Smith with The Beatles’ influence, Silver with Thelonious Monk’s tonal approach. While most groups don’t stray too far from the core of their sound, it’s their dedication and ingenuity within that framework that makes them distinctive, timeless, and recognizable.

Then again, there are those artists out there who believe innovation of sound or style is the end-all, each successive release deviating from the past one. Sometimes, this pursuit lasts a lifetime, while at other times, it involves a mid-career pivot or desire for newness.

This brings us to John Vanderslice, whose Exit Scam, an album he recorded with Devin O’Brien under the handle ketamine_shoppe, came out last week. This album is a glitchy, expressive, deeply emotional collection of modular performances that stand in direct contrast to the earlier work of Vanderslice. Well-renowned for his journey through the indie rock scene as MK Ultra and later as a prolific singer-songwriter, his previous albums always contained powerful lyrics on government, failure, love, and loss.

For many, including myself, his lyricism felt like the tip of the spear in indie rock’s introspective and reflective landscape. During the pandemic, Vanderslice dove headfirst into modular synthesis, streaming hour-long jam sessions on Instagram Live that captured this new creative fascination. In hindsight, I guess it should’ve been of little surprise, given his skills as a producer and audio engineer—honed by running Tiny Telephone in Oakland for decades. This left turn in direction, format, and instrumentation came with the self-awakening brought about by moving to LA, finding love, and marrying in a deeply transformational time in his life.

This year, Vanderslice’s sonic investigations have been some of my favorite new music. Along with Exit Scam, he released another collaborative album, Google Earth, with James Riotto, featuring more of his voice and additional organic instrumentation. The album flushes out hints towards Aphex Twin, early MORR Music, and even towards a distant echo of Horace Silver in some of the horn-like phrasing. This new direction feels sometimes like a departure, but weirdly more fitting for an artist like John Vanderslice, whose voice has grown and expanded exponentially over the years.

Comparing Vanderslice even to artists like Smith and Silver shows us two (of many) paths taken by musicians. There are those (Smith and Silver) holding on to the red thread of their musical language, consistent and evolving within familiar forms, while Vanderslice represents that rare breed who embrace reinvention and seek to explore new ground with each new release, proving both approaches can work toward creating music that has lasting resonance.

Some notable music releases from this past week:

ketamine_shoppe - exit scam

For all of the reasons listed above, plus it’s just a really great record!

If you like this, try these albums:

DNTEL - Something Always Goes Wrong (1999)

Aphex Twin - …I Care Because You Do (1995)

Phonem - Hydro Electric (2000)

Wand - In A Capsule Underground

A big standout in the LA “garage” rock scene, Wand has been playing alongside your favorite bands for over 10 years. Personally, I’ve always appreciated the live performances over the recordings because their rough edge are always sanded off before the albums are released. This on the other hand shows an alternate world Wand. This collection of demos and unreleased songs from their 2014 debut, Ganglion Reef. This compilation is insanely good with Flaming Lips-esque orchestration and fuzzed out bursts like The Seeds.

If you like this, try these albums:

The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin (1999)

The Seeds - S/T (1966)

Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker (2010)

Curses - Another Heaven

The perfect soundtrack for a vampire goth party. Curses aka Luca Venezia pulls influence from the darkest of corners in New Wave, early industrial, and synthpop in this latest Johnny Jewel produced album, Another Heaven. Pretty great timing for Halloween.

If you like this, try these albums: