Mellow, sad, with a tendency to sooth, Vandaveer provides bedroom guitar-folk that aspires to dream-pop, but falls short of profundity. Flat harmonies and wooden melodies envelop the cabin-in-the-suburbs album like an old coat that is too large. This record holds no possibility of upsetting a nap and only is unsettling in the way the most pop-oriented folk music might be.
Mark Charles Heidinger is the man behind the magic in Vandaveer, a young-nostalgia-folk project based in Kentucky. You may already know Mark Charles from his years as the front man for the Apparitions. The new album Grace & Speed is being put out by Gypsy Eyes, a label associated with the DC collective, The Federal Reserve.
On Grace & Speed I hear many echoes of folk music past. As if this young man had spent his brief life looking for himself in the backrooms of ancient record stores—pushing boxes of dusty LPs around and sampling their fuzzy melodies, scratched old grooves—the songs sound like a very careful book report compiled by a very careful and earnest student. The voices of history speak through this child as he scribbles tableau imitations of the 60s and 70s on his kitchen walls, deep within the suburban night of 2007.
For example, Vandaveer frequently provides a clean, clear, and under control distillation of Dylan’s raspy croaks. Also, "The Streets Is Full of Creeps" sounds like a painstaking tribute to Tom Waits.
Certain moments create an awkward tension between the youthful Heidinger and his chosen subject matter. When he sings, "we may be aging, but we shouldn't count in years" I can't help but think that the 'timeless' thematics of traditional folk are tenuously transposed into the manic silicone/meth/concrete forest of contemporary youth. Despite this dilemma, forgetting the context of history and slipping into a timeless place will afford this record an enjoyable listen.