Intramural

This Is A Landslide

[4/5]



By their very nature, collaboration albums tend to be disjointed affairs. Often, the result is a spotty compilation effort at best. So it’s to Denver Dalley’s great credit that he’s managed to create a truly unified, moving and in some ways anachronistic whole: An actual capital-A Album. On This Is A Landslide, the former Desaparecidos guitarist and Statistics frontman and his collaborator Sam Shacklock have stitched a recurring motif of loneliness and heartbreak throughout a wildly varying cadre of singers. The juxtaposition of their cool, detached electronic beats and samples and the often heavily effects-laden vocals achieve a sort of middle ground of feeling. It doesn’t make sense that barebones compositions like this should come off so heartfelt, but chalk it up to fantastic performances from Judah Nagler of the Velvet Teen (who howls like a sex-starved Portishead on “Queens Of Comparison”), TJ Penzone of Men, Women And Children (who adds a propulsive blast of energy on “Rocket”) and Greg Dulli, to name just three, whose otherworldly lament washes over tides of feedback and piano on the chilling and memorable title track. (SLOWDANCE) Luke O’Neil



ROCKS LIKE:

Statistics’ Leave Your Name

Air’s Moon Safari

Everything But The Girl’s Walking Wounded



IN-STORE SESSION WITH DENVER DALLEY

How did you decide who to work with on each song?

A lot of them were just friends. About half of them were people I already knew. Some, like John [Roderick] from the Long Winters, I just e-mailed blindly and said I liked his voice. Basically, it was anyone whose voice I admired or thought had a signature sound or whatever. A pretty random mix. My friend Jeff Klein who is a singer/songwriter from Austin, Texas, introduced me to Greg Dulli in New Orleans when we were on tour. I mentioned I had a song I wanted Greg to hear and [Klien] forwarded him the song and he got back to me immediately. It was a huge moment for me, since I grew up listening to the Afghan Whigs.

Was there anyone you couldn’t get that you wanted to?

We were supposed to have Mark Hoppus from Blink-182/(+44) and Jim Adkins from Jimmy Eat World. Jim couldn’t do it for scheduling reasons, and it sounded like it was going to be a legal nightmare to get Mark. I worked on the record for so long getting schedules to match up and dealing with legal stuff. It was quite a process. I’m like a licensed paralegal now! I figured it would just be like, “So and so’s gonna play, and it’s gonna be fun!” I was on Saddle Creek for years and the artists would just sing on each other’s records and there was no paperwork.

Did you work on melodies and lyrics as well or leave that up to the singers?

They came up with all the melodies and lyrics themselves. I gave them complete control. I loved each track and what each vocalist did. One of the best parts of the process was to send them this blank canvas and to have them send back their parts. It was such a cool moment. A lot of it was just luck. There wasn’t a single track where I was like, “Oh, can you go back and…”.

How did you arrive at such a consistent sound with so many people working on the album? It’s all pretty melancholy.

The original idea was for it to be a good mix CD, and it would be this great cross-promotional thing for some of the bands that are brand new without much exposure and some that already have an established fanbase. I tried to have the same mindset for each track, but that was just luck to have so many people collaborate and have it be cohesive. I was curious if the tracks lyrically would be so far off, but it’s not too repetitive and it’s not too far out there. Some of my songwriting, like with Statistics, people say they can hear a sort of longing to get out of the small city you grew up in. I don’t try to zero in on that, but anytime I write a song it’s at night when I can’t sleep. Maybe there’s that sense of isolation. -Luke O’Neil