Vandaveer
As Serenity Invades, It Sets
Apr 2, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Patrick Stolley
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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The Book Of Love
Unreleased
Stephin Merritt penned this gem. It's a fine, fine song, yes. But since I didn't write it, I thought I'd use "the Google" and Wikipedia to read up on Merritt so I could pretend to know something odd and quirky about him that would make this song description more compelling or relevant. But then—as I soon discovered—seemingly everything about Stephen Merritt is odd and quirky, right down to his "distinctive and untrained bass voice," his "fascination with the undead," and his chronic suffering from "a hearing condition known as hyperacusis, where any sound heard louder than normal begins to feedback." Fascinating, odd, quirky. Nothing long and boring there, I dare say. Just like The Magnetic Fields.
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Long Lost Cause
Unreleased
This is the first song I can remember working on in duet-like fashion with my good sister Rose. We never really rehearsed it all that much. I just scribbled some words down for her, she made dinner, and a bottle of wine later it sounded pretty good. Hasn't really changed all that much from take #1 way, way back when to whatever take this particular version was merely way back when. Robby Cosenza from These United States and One Hundred Other Bands plays some snazzy harmonica here, too. We should've put that man and his harp on the record version of this tune now that I think about it.
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Beverly Cleary's 115th …
Unreleased
Hands down, the best part about having a subscription to The Washington Post is the Kids section. Everything else in the paper is all dire and uber-serious and filled with disappointment, but KidsPost tosses such unpleasantries aside and focuses on topics that really matter. Like space travel, exotic animals, and tireless, heartwarming souls like Beverly Cleary. She turned 90 a while back and the KidsPost had a story on her life and career. The title read "Ramona, Forever Seems Like Such A Very Long Time" or something very close to that - a play on one of her books called Ramona Forever. I thought that'd make a damn fine opening line for a song, so I swiped it. The whole 115th dream thing is just silly, ham-fisted acknowledgement that yes, I wrote a song about a girl named Ramona, too… We all gotta start recycling sooner or later, right? Also, if Uncle Bob had a 115th dream as funny and fantastical as he suggests, then I'm betting Ms. Cleary did too.
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Turpentine
Unreleased
I seem to remember this one coming to be on a train somewhere in England... This feels like an early, not-quite-finished version of the song to me, but it's more or less the same on the new record. Train rides make for good thinking. And reading. And song-sculpting. We need more trains in the states. All this land made for you and me and all most of us ever get to see are the damn interstate exits. Ah, well… Every now and then I picture Tom Waits singing a few lines that I scribble down. I remember thinking at the time that he'd sell this one to the listener far better than I. But then, that's probably true across the board, and, well, there's no harm in trying. So I soldiered on and things turned out just fine. Just another ditty about stripping away all the layers, layers, and more layers and getting down to the heart of things. A well-worn theme, says me.
Music comes from the book of love, sings Mark Heidinger, the man behind the Washington, D.C. one-man-band Vandaveer. The book is also called long and boring by the same guy, stuffed to the brim with anecdotes, charts and figures and little scraps of reference, of tall tales and very real gravity. It's full of the crystal clear impressions as well as the static-y persuasions that wrap around everyone's wounded, but still gentle heart. Or at least that's how the truly kind hearts are - fond of resilience and getting back up, even if they've lost far too much blood and they're shaky as fawns. They get the dirt flossed out of their teeth, the twigs and leaves combed from their ruffled hair, the wounds scarred over with a glossy mark that slowly fades back to the skin it used to be and before the trickling tears have calmed into a light dry, the mouth is already attempting a comeback, lending its breath to a song or a melody to silence the heartache that brought all of the preceding events on. It's enough to ask which came first: music or love. There's probably an easy answer that won't be belabored here, but there could still be an argument if someone wanted to make one. The way that Heidinger sings it, here with some lovely female vocal accompaniment that he was touring with at the time last spring, they could be conjoined twins, sharing a base of a neck, some arms, torso and legs. They often may wish to splinter off and get greedy - claiming certain particles of blood and fluid as their own and just get pissy about ownership - but there's really no getting away from the responsibility of what they were born into on that fateful day of conception. It's not in one of his songs, but Heidinger or the spirit of Vandaveer, might say something like, "Love comes from the back of the neck, from the back of a breath, from the hairs that stand up on end on both as the sparks sprinkle down like unseen pixie dust." His is an idyllic look at the preciousness of days spent in that moment - or years and years of moments if you're one of the lucky ones - with two souls in-synch. It's a take on the very transparent fragility that is associated with the feelings that beat like tiny, but mighty wings of passion and connection. Heidinger sings as if the moods and assortments on his inside are in the midst of a spring cleaning - that soothing pitching and renewal that seems to leap out of people when the winter weather breaks for good. He sings as if, perhaps unbeknownst to him or in complete consortium with his understanding, there's a sapling blooming from near his toe-tips and it's inching through his bones and muscles and just as it's stretched his elastic skin to its popping point, the green buds pop out from the ends of the hard brown tree limbs and that's what pokes through on the other side. The buds are his fingertips and partially his hair. The tree is opened up to the light outside and that's when the song starts - each of them - at that moment, when it's learned that there's something new and pleasant just beginning a new awakening or seasonal existence. It's a natural release and once it's begun, the song that is, it rests and soon enough, without really noticing what's happened, you're in the shade and there's a nice little serenity invading.
Vandaveer Official Site
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