Chad VanGaalen announces new album, shares psychedelic animated video for new song

Last year, the consistently great (and often underrated) Canadian indie-folk artist Chad VanGaalen put out a handful of Bandcamp-exclusive releases for the platform's monthly fundraisers — including some previously unreleased material, some instrumentals, and more — and now he has announced his seventh proper album, World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener. It follows 2017's Light Information, and it comes out March 19 via Sub Pop (pre-order).

Chad produced, recorded, and mixed the album himself, and he also applied his video-making talents to the psychedelic animated video for lead single "Samurai Sword." Chad 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.

It just spilled out in a couple minutes. I didn’t try to stop it because I was smiling like I was just cruising through my neighbourhood. Simple like a sandbox. An ode to the simplicity. It’s hard to let things be simple. But simple is easy on the mind, and being jovial in song is something I find really difficult. Why? What?

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 watercolor 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. Fuck time.

Check out the song/video and tracklist below…

Tracklist
1. Spider Milk
2. Flute Peace
3. Starlight
4. Where Is It All Going?
5. Earth From a Distance
6. Nightwaves
7. Plant Music
8. Nothing Is Strange
9. Inner Fire
10. Golden Pear
11. Nightmare Scenario
12. Samurai Sword
13. Water Brother