Anna Scott January 31st, 2021 - 4:56 PM
The indie-folk artist Chad VanGaalen has released the first single from World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener, his new album set for release on March 19, 2021 worldwide via Flemish Eye. This will be his seventh studio album following Lost Harmonies from October 2020.
On the “Samurai Sword” video, animated as a cartoon, the Canadian musician explains, “I was drawing black and white plant backgrounds for this song because of the great old samurai movies of the past. I like how nature sometimes takes the lead. I was getting all knotted in my mind about the sky. I looked at my dad’s watercolour paintings of a sky, and felt like I couldn’t get the feel right. So, I just borrowed his sky for a scene and then I realized that my dad’s paintings were perfect and already full of real life energy. I used them to finish the video and felt like we got to go on this quest together. In my mind.”
On his YouTube, VanGaalen explains that the video expands the song by over a minute and is set in the world of the “Thrift Drifters” that he crafted. The video also featured on Adult Swim’s weekly anime programming block last night, January 30.
Watch the cartoon video here:
Speaking to the song itself, VanGaalen says, “I had just ripped a bunch of old leaking copper pipe out of my basement in a reno job that I jumped into willy nilly. Realizing how magical the pipes sounded, I put them on some dirty styrofoam and banged out the janky beat that introduces the song! Garbage is life.” “Samurai Sword” itself is not overcomplicated, driven by a simple beat from the copper pipe and an acoustic guitar, completed with VanGaalen’s smooth indie-folk vocals.
Before this album, VanGaalen was featured on the lineup for the Pickathon Music Festival that was set to be held last July in Happy Valley, Oregon prior to its cancellation due to COVID-19. VanGaalen has been in the indie music scene since 2004, which saw the release of his first album Infiniheart.
VanGaalen’s fresh new album World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener will be out from March 19 and is available for preorder here.
