By Sean Moeller

Sometimes in the course of listening to an album, a character hidden somewhere deep inside, jumps up and bites, holding onto a piece of your calf meat or locking hard into the backs of your shoulder blades, with its claws and its overbite, leaving an impression, if not a nasty scar. Most of the time, these characters only faintly claim any semblance to the lives we lead between sleep and waking, but they feast on a connection that’s made so easily, so effortlessly that it feels recognizable. As quickly as a child can lose the grip of a balloon’s tail on a gusty day, sending it flying straight up to its death, this character starts you thinking about what you would do if your office flooded with water every night, believing that this might be a concern that should be addressed fucking immediately. You begin to feel the inner thoughts of said characters gravitating and motoring around in your own thoughts and head, glad-handing with the others and making it nearly impossible to tell the authentic from the spurious.

These characters can usurp what we believe and turn us into fuller, heavier people simply because we’re taking on another life, like adopting another dozen personalities if we’re listening to a John Vanderslice album. We’re taken to war, we’re dropped into bear cages (figuratively), we’re left loveless, we’re sent out to pasture, we’re chased, we’re scared shitless, we’re hopeless, we’re hopeful and we’ve had enough to know that we don’t want any more.

With that last thought, he gives us “Dear Sarah Shu,” from last year’s intoxicating “Pixel Revolt.” It’s a song that he’s recently dropped from the live set list due to its compositional complexities. It’s a stunning piece of music that may someday be revived, but for now will live on in its somber dramatic way through the recorded versions on “Pixel” and on “Suddenly It All Went Dark,” a live to two-track record of “Pixel Revolt” in its entirety that Barsuk released last week through its website.

“Sarah Shu’s a made-up successor,” Vanderslice said Sunday night while driving to Boise. “I wrote that song when I wanted to stop making music. I never wanted to record again. I never wanted to tour again. I wanted to stop. I wanted to be done. I was basically writing a resignation letter, like a final message from a general in a war zone. It wasn’t just someone taking over for me as a songwriter. It was someone taking over for me as a worker in some untenable part of the world. In my mind, someone had to be in the post.”

In the most engrossing line of the song, Vanderslice sings, “In the end, it was love, we had to learn to survive,” and coming when it does, sounds like the most awing piece of truth and poetry that anyone alive has ever written. It reaches right in and gives a nice warm hug to whatever might be breaking inside of you though you’re not Sarah Shu, you’ve no place there, and you’re actually more like Eddie Valiant visiting Toontown or Dorothy visiting Oz, for as much as you actually fit. It’s like eavesdropping, though with your whole body.

The feeling of wanting to take the trap door in the floor as an easy exit, leaving music behind, hits the 38-year-old Vanderslice frequently and actually scared him enough during the making of the last record to seek medical attention for symptoms of depression. But the thought of not writing another song may work to his advantage.

“It’s a way to survive,” he said. “Sometimes you need the idea that you can bail out. Nietzsche said that the thought of suicide is comforting—the thought of just leaving. I can find other ways to be happy. There are times when making music isn’t fun at all. It’s so tied to your ego and sometimes it’s misery. But I don’t feel that way now. I feel happy and I feel good.”

Vanderslice weighs in on some of the characters that have latched onto his mind and haven’t let go (from his own songs to those of his contemporaries:
“All the war narrators I identify with. Usually, when I’m writing an outsider’s narrative, it’s because I have some sympathies with him. Most of my narrators are slightly unpopular and I’m making them a little more popular. I sing these people every night so I feel very close to them. The one character that I don’t really feel close to is the narrator from ‘Up Above the Sea’ (off of “Cellar Door”) because I’m not paranoid or confrontational.

“Jason Molina (of Songs:Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co.) has a persona and it’s that super fractured, very, very damaged, hardcore loser in a sense – an emotional loser, not in our society’s sense. And (Dan) Bejar’s stuff, those mocking narratives…Do you have (Destroyer’s) ‘Rubies?’ The way he taunts the listener – it’s intellectually nagging and I love it. He makes me a little paranoid. I’m like, ‘Shit. What’s he getting at?’ It’s so majestic and archetypal. It reminds me a lot of old Dylan. He had that biting tone. Those are the ones that are most vivid in my mind. I still listen to those records a lot and they’ve stayed with me. That’s a good thing.”