Random Google searches can yield some pretty great finds. And today was one of those lucky days. I was actually googling around for some web design ideas for a site I’m working on and *BAM* I was smacked in the head with a gem by the name of Gavin Castleton.
Why have I not heard him before? Who knows?!? But I’m sure glad I found him. I played around on his site for a hot minute until I found the page where I could listen to his latest album, HOME, which was released in April of 2009.
This is where I fell…
HOME carries you on a focused journey of love (and the footprint it leaves when it steps on your face) through the eyes of a man, a woman, two ladybugs, and an army of corpses. Not only is the concept left-of-center, the album itself is unique in its function. Freshly arisen from the devastation of a six-year relationship, Gavin set out to design an album that would both document his healing process and deliver comfort to listeners to the heartbroken.
In what close friends described as “a monumental error in judgment,” Gavin enlisted the help of his departing lover to help write the story. The process became so heart-wrenching that he abandoned the house they had shared, and for five months (until his final mastering date) he and his faithful dog slept on couches, floors, and car seats, recording musicians all over New England.
The result is HOME, a 14-song narrative that follows his relationship from the coffee-shop flirtation beginning to the mauled-by-zombies-while-his girlfriend-leaves-in-a-helicopter-with-some-army-dude end.
“For the last few years I’ve been approaching my songs as parts of a bigger composition. While the rest of the world is taking things in smaller and smaller doses, I find myself making bigger and bigger pieces. I don’t know if I’m responding to the shrinking average attention span, or running from it,” says Castleton.
Song by song the line between documentary and fantasy becomes blurred, as you find yourself careening through a dynamic plot that unfolds like a classic horror movie. The album is sequenced in two halves: the first depicts Castleton and his young lover falling deeply in love, and the second, in which said lovers are stalked incessantly by a growing population of flesh-eating zombies, is the story of falling out of love.
What does love sound like? Tracks like “Coffeelocks” and “Warpaint” suggest Philip Glass, Brian Wilson, Postal Service, and Pink Floyd. When flirtation gives way to passion, songs like “Sugar on the Sheets” and “Stampete” summon the sounds of D’Angelo, Prince, and Portishead as Castleton is joined by the versatile voice of Lauren Coleman.
But when “The Onslaught” begins, relationship decay is positively palpable with Castleton flipping the soundtrack into something from the Goblin/King Crimson school of prog. Holed up in an abandoned grocery store surrounded by zombies, the relationship begins to devour itself. The apocalyptic shades of Massive Attack, Brian Eno, and Godspeed You Black Emperor tint tracks like “The Wall Starts to Give” and “Unparallel Rabbits.” Locked in a storage closet with his lover safe in the arms of an “army dude,” Castleton delivers an Oscar-worthy performance in his suicide march, “Oregon.”
To fully appreciate why he is then miraculously resurrected by a pair of singing ladybugs, you would want to take a look at his blog, where Castleton has been weaving additional narratives around and through the album (and his other recent works) since he began the production two years ago. The tiny spirit guides beg him to try a happier ending for the album, and he does, in the lush and linear next-to-last track, “The Human Torch.”
But things are never so picture perfect is the warning in the final song “Credits,” in which Gavin’s patented self-awareness is transcended even further, breaking the fourth wall a la Charlie Kaufman and referring to the album itself, “Is this me holding on or letting go?”
Despite the unconventionally wide scope of Home, Castleton insists it is a very accurate depiction of a rough breakup: “When you fall in love, is it not a little bit like a musical? When your heart breaks, is it not a little bit like a horror movie?”
Here’s a little ditty to see more of Gavin’s pure genius.
“Home is a bizarrely intriguing prog-pop album that only works because of Castleton’s spectacular voice. If you want to be challenged while still enjoying pop songs, this disc’s the way to go.“
- Alternative Press
“Castleton has a tremendous gift for fashioning grand cinematic songs that swell with ambitious prose”
- Portland Mercury
Follow Gavin Castleton on Twitter @gavincastleton
Read his blog at gavincastleton.blogspot.com
Buy his music on iTunes
William Lanier, Editor, keeping things in line…