John Vanderslice - White Wilderness

White Wilderness (January 25, Dead Oceans), is the result of an imaginative collaboration by singer/songwriter John Vanderslice and San Francisco's Magik*Magik Orchestra under the direction of Minna Choi. Preserving but expanding beyond the political edge that has come to help define Vanderslice's compelling recent works, White Wilderness is an adventurous study in the outreaches of orchestral, cinematic arranging. "Magik changed my life," says Vanderslice of his own studio's "house band", and here he recruits Choi and her talented ensemble to inject his latest songs with a modern, sometimes discordant, sometimes precocious sense of dramatic scope. And all done in one monumental three-day recording session.

Of particular note is the album's off-kilter rhythms of kettle drums and tinkering clatter, plucked strings, woodwinds bobbing and cascading swaths of symphonic texture pulled taut -- then released in a jumble of colorful flourishes. But for every avenue of jittery, nervous energy, as on "The Piano Lesson", there is an equal and no less compelling outlet of stately, graceful beauty. The shuffling "Sea Salt" is elevated to the theatrical stage with dark undertones and gleam of an insistent piano line but Vanderslice's simple melody shines through it all with unaffected clarity. This is a freewheeling album of both delicate nuance and sweepingly powerful embellishments, Vanderslice's lyrical imagery abuzz with, but never overwhelmed by, the crosscurrents of strings and reeds that ebb and flow above, beneath and around him. Watch the White Wilderness EPK after the jump.

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John Vanderslice - "Sea Salt" (from the album White Wilderness)

John Vanderslice - "The Piano Lesson" (from the album White Wilderness)

Photo Credit: Autumn de Wilde