While it's not Vanderslice's most direct work, it's some of his most interesting.
JV has delivered a well-produced and thought-provoking album that sinks in more and more after each listen.
The unpredictability forces the listener to immerse him or herself in the experience, resulting in an album that feels rich and weathered like a piece of driftwood turned into a coffee table.
Dagger Beach is unfinished just as the recovery it documents is (or was) a work-in-progress, full of labored obsession and easily sensed isolation — in the “deep dark woods,” alone with one’s fears.
For a longtime professional musician who woke up one morning and called off his record deal, Dagger Beach is not as experimental as you'd expect.