VanWyck “Dust Chaser”

Into the desert – in search of freedom.

It’s come to the point where a new release from VanWyck is a reason to sit up and pay attention.  The Amsterdam based singer-songwriter has, over a series of four previous albums, shown a notable talent for observation, metaphor and half-hidden double meanings.  ‘Dust Chaser‘ follows on from ‘The Epic Tale of the Stranded Man‘ in having an underlying concept but it is also very much an evolution in sound and musical direction, heading out into untrammelled vistas of desert rock whilst never letting go of the particular songwriting essence that has marked VanWyck out as an artist of note.  It’s a difficult thing, evolution, with so many wanting just more of the same, and it’s a risk in that what makes one worth listening to could be lost.  But not on ‘Dust Chaser.‘  It’s a questing album – with desires to be free tied to desires to be emotionally tied down, with chance meetings offering alternative lives.  Opener ‘Unravel‘ sets the scene with VanWyck singing quietly and questioningly over the lightest accompaniment of a desire to be lost and disconnected “let me sink through the floorboards / let me scurry behind your walls / let me fall through the cracks / Let me unravel” before a strengthening vocal describes a determined escape a la Thelma and Louise.  At which point, gloriously, the band kicks in – guitarist Reyer Zwart and drummer Rowin Tettero adding a hypnotic element to Henk Hulzebosch’s piano.  It’s a cinematic number, to match the cinematic escape – but the following ‘Burning of Dawn‘ immediately questions its reality, as an imp of perversity gently taunts the listener questioning, always questioning – do you really have the need to escape? Wouldn’t you rather stay in your confined life?  Do you have what it takes to pass through strange doors?  ‘Flowers in the Fields‘ offers an alternative vision – one of defiantly breaking free from conventions.  There’s a passionate intensity to the restless motion the song embodies – steering by instinct alone and cutting a swathe through “all you little part time sinners” as the narrator embraces the commitment to the outsider life, or as VanWyck puts it “make room for something true.”

What can one do with freedom?  The ‘Desert Bride’ offers one possibility – whilst the titular character seemingly happily, albeit practically, chooses marriage: “she don’t say no – he’s got a factory” there is also a hint that a different life might be more attractive: “On the ridge she took my hand / Tracing the lines in my palm / You will travel over many lands / I will stay here and raise his sons / But tonight we are alike.”  Yet ‘The Swell‘ offers a bleaker look at that alternative – a rootless traveller slowly becomes less than a memory, suggesting that a life forgotten was barely a life lived.  It’s the same bleak view that is picked up on ‘Beer Fizz‘ – a more direct portrait of a life lived alone, recounting a thousand days passing as a single repeated moment, the same trudge home from work, the same lone beer, the same insomnia and the same repeated thoughts in the dead of night.  With a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment, it is a song that dips deep into the sorrow of an unending heartbreak, or some worse grief.  It’s gorgeous in its stripped-down dive into unending regret.

The final third of the album offers a resolution to all of these contrasting emotional pushes and pulls – ‘Towards the Sun‘ is a sunny acknowledgement that the reason all the accrual of grief and pain is referred to as baggage is because there is always the option of putting it down – necessary if one is to summit the metaphorical mountains of one’s hopes and desires.  ‘Dust Chaser‘ proffers the thought that freedom can be better explored in a pair – whilst the country and blues-tinged closer ‘My Deliverance‘ finds that there is greater strength in a relationship which allows one to still chase dreams whilst the other remains grounded, a balance, an anchor that enables a long affectionate tether.

‘Dust Chaser‘ is a musically diverse album – from the most intimate of breathless ballads to the most hypnotically rocking music that VanWyck has shared to date.  It’s an album that doesn’t tie itself to one simple interpretation of the emotions passed through across the baker’s dozen of songs that make up the album – there are many different freedoms to quest for, there are many different griefs and sorrows to resolve.  In that sense it is as enigmatic as any of the previous albums, more importantly it is a wonderful listen both sonically and for the way the songs probe the mind rather than just washing by as entertaining sounds.  Listen to this album and you’ll doubtless be finding yourself searching out the whole back catalogue.