Art Vandalay

Review of Dancin' With Your Demons

Neil Young once suggested that folk-rock dream team Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was a well-oiled machine, while Crazy Horse, his legendary backing band, was a rusty truck you couldnʼt quite keep on the road.

Well, Iʼll do him one better: Minneapolis' Art Vandalay is a little bit of both. As in, their album “Dancinʼ with Your Demons” is well-oiled music to listen to in your rusty truck. But thatʼs not the only reason I bring “Mr. Soul” up: His fans, new and old, will find much to love here, as singer/songwriter Brandon Henry and his comrades in Art Vandalay create music that can only be described as timeless. Not to be outdone, they also bridge the gap between dusty roads and hipster pads — an enormous undertaking if I ever did hear one.

Take this mini-LPʼs opening track “I Been Down,” for example. The guitar work could easily be confused for some lost noodlings from Youngʼs Buffalo Springfield days, but, once Henryʼs pleasant lyrics and Calvin Plocherʼs refrained drumming saturate the scene, youʼre immediately pushed forward a quarter-century.

Then again, you might not hear that at all. You could listen to “If You Love Me” (the albumʼs best entry point) and just hear Henryʼs expansive, humming- down-the-highway approach to songwriting for what it is: impossibly catchy. Art Vandalay isnʼt pop music per se, but the group definitely deserves its very own horde of uncontrollably emotional fans. If anyone starts a sign-up sheet looking for people to storm their performance at Beanerʼs, my name will be right up there in the No. 1 spot. --Matt Perrine, Duluth Budgeteer