The first time I heard David Vandervelde I thought, “My God, this sounds so much like T-Rex, it’s ridiculous,” and I thought I’d never really listen again, because it was just too damn close. I heard Marc Bolan, or something insanely close to Marc Bolan
every time David Vandervelde opened his young mouth. But then I listened again, and … (screen gets all blurry) I remembered that way back in 1991, when I first heard Slanted and Enchanted, by a little band called Pavement, all I could hear was Lou Reed (honorable mention to Mark E. Smith). I just kept
thinking, “Who does this guy think he is?” Well, now we all know who he is, and I doubt that anyone thinks of anything other than Pavement when they think of Pavement (aside from all the imprinted memories of the things we did to the sound of those tunes). The reason I could overcome this influence inertia is
simple: there is something in each of these voices, something very familiar, a rock and roll archetype if you will, that demands a person to listen again, whether you want to or not, because it is a new creation by the force of its quality.

Eight songs. No self-indulgent 20+ song-a-rama, here. Just eight songs, done very well. The opening track, “Nothin’ No” (penned with Jay Bennett) features an electric sitar and vocal hooks so good that it’s hard to pay attention to the next tune, because you want to hear it again, the kind of insane hook that seems to
have been in the air and all around all the time, and Vandervelde just heard it first and showed it to us. This kind of thing happens a couple more times on this record, notably on “Wisdom From a Tree,” a Jeff Lynne nod if I’ve ever heard one, and the jangly sugar pop of “Can‘t See Your Face No More.” Toss these tunes in
with the slow, steady mellow rock of “Jacket” and “Corduroy Blues,” sprinkle with some of best sounding, most appropriately arranged string sections in all the right places, and you have a pretty amazing debut.

Two years in the making, (mostly at Pieholden, Jay
Bennett’s Chicago studio), The Moonstation House Band
is meticulously built with all the right kinds of pulse-quickening tricks and hints that made the classics classic (like “Murder in Michigan”: drums going double time and half time in just the
right places, multiple harmonies, knowing when to be sparse, when to rock, excellent attention to tone, etc.). It’s almost ridiculous that this dude is twenty-two. He should be wearing some kind of cape and crown, and given a “Most Precocious Young Thang” award for harnessing the essence of something that
happened years before his birth, and at the same time,
created something new.

It is a shame that the time of AM radio is dead, or that real radio is dead. Those crackly tunes are faded with the sound of Wolfman Jack, halfway to the Crab Nebula by now. It’s a shame because this record was made for that time, for the pushbutton radios that actually moved a string inside the console that moved a coil that tuned in the stations. David Vandervelde could hang with Peter Frampton, with Elton John or Bread. Girls with feathered hair would put door posters up of him and twirl the long, curly cords of
their phones and chew gum while staring at his pearly whites. He makes it no secret, either, right there in the liner notes it reads: “Inspiration from rock classics”. David Vandervelde seems to be turning his “inspiration from rock classics” into new, classic, rock.