As the second single off of their upcoming comeback album Remain Obscure, “A Voralberg of the Mind” by The Van Pelt does an excellent job at setting a scene into which the album can later sprawl out. A collage of spoken-word repartee, effervescent guitars ringing throughout the track, and a phlegmatic vocal delivery from Chris Leo, this song promises an inimitable experience to come for the listener when the album drops on September 25th.
“A Voralberg of the Mind” is a true testament to the fact that The Van Pelt has been around paying their dues in the scene since at least the 90s. The loftiness of the lyrics rivals the lore-building of PJ Harvey on her 2023 studio album I Inside the Old Year Dying. The bassline intermingling with the guitar riff zingers traces back to some of the songs on Fear of Music and Remain In Light by Talking Heads. Speaking of Talking Heads, it seems that the title of the upcoming album Remain Obscure is a reference to Remain In Light, which would testify to the fact that this album revolves around the act of skulking away from the spotlight, shunning it, and remaining anonymous. That is the way The Van Pelt themselves have operated for the majority of their career, evading the spotlight and remaining on the margins of the scenes of which they have been a part. They’ve thus gained a cult following that they could probably trust with their most abstruse and esoteric music.
Going back to “The Voralberg of the Mind”, this song also paints the picture of a kind of getaway, a plan to seek refuge in the nooks and crannies of a mountain in order to stay out of the line of sight of attention and commodification.
“The Alps are eroding as fast as they grow / Granular deductions and replacements as a function / All hidden under the snow,” Chris sings towards the beginning of the song. To reword that or to interpret it verbally would be to rewrite it, but let us give it a try. He is lamenting that hiding places like the Alps are dissolving as fast as they are repairing themselves, and inconspicuously taking away from something and putting something just as infinitesimal back is not the way to build something. It is just an act of stagnation.
Then he says: “A break from a break from that which already isn’t whole,” and while you might at first think of ‘break’ as meaning ‘reprieve’, it seems here it actually means a broken piece of something. Continuing the argument from before, he goes on to say that a smaller piece of a small piece of something that is itself broken is not anything. And later on, he also says: “A place name that names a place that it is not.” This furthers the same sentiment that giving a name to a sorry excuse of a thing will not bulk it up to be something.
Vorarlberg is a state in Austria, said to be the westernmost state of the country. And that makes sense because it is one of the furthest points of the world in which you can equivocate the light and remain obscure and unknown. Chris Leo even says on the song: “Spin the globe too fast and it’s already been missed,” signifying how small and unobtrusive this place is. “The Voralberg of the Mind” works like a story being told as a person trudges through the ice and snow to get to a place where they are not in contact with anything but nature, but since it is of the mind, it could be interpreted as a mental landscape that offers a break from a world which is flashy and tawdry when you are craving the quiet of the snow.
The song ends as the percussion grows stronger, like footsteps that grow more certain and determined when you see the destination you have been working towards come into view. You might assume that at the end of the song, “The Voralberg of the Mind” ensconces and entrenches the one that had been building it broken piece by broken piece since the beginning.
So maybe there is meaning in the brokenness of a thing. Just like how there is peace in the anonymity of simply being.
Take a listen to “The Voralberg of the Mind” below.
Written by Leo August
