Noisey interviewed Chad VanGaalen way back in April and found out a few things about the Calgary renaissance-dad. For starters, his records are performed almost entirely alone. This is a feat in and of it self, and should no doubt be commended with a photo of what this probably looks like in practice:Bravo. But wait there’s more! Van Gaalen is also a father. This means that between drums, guitar, vocals, bass and all the neat gadgets, the guy finds time to kick it as a Dad and be damn good at that too. Most importantly however, we found out that where once his work was based in stream-of-consciousness and bursts of inspiration, today his craft is tied to a pretty tight schedule. Fair enough, I mean you gotta commend the guy for doing the musical equivalent of a plate-balance act every goddamn day of his life. But as fun as adult-like organization and family rides in the mini-van can be, its high time we look back to those not-so-grown-up days when Chad Van Gaalen made songs as they came to him. I like to imagine that in this time, he sat atop a rocky Alberta mountain surrounded by obscure instruments waiting for a muse to whisper a whacked-out folk melody in his ear, but I can’t confirm this as fact. What I can confirm though, is that VanGaalen made one of my favorite albums of all time in that whimsical age known as 2006 and that it stands out as his strongest work to date.Every song on Skelliconnection is special, even if some stand out more than others. The focus of years of hard work is evident – the pop sensibility of “Mini TVs”, for instance, can be paired with the Xenakis-rock track “Dandruff”, and yet a sense of cohesion reigns supreme throughout. This uniformity of tone comes through despite the lack of a consistent method for conveying it, and is why Skelliconnection carries all the magic of a pop record without quite being one. This kind of cohesion takes years, and having compiled the work between 2002-2006, one imagines there were brutal amounts of work put into it. But to call the work a struggle is inaccurate; no matter how difficult Skelliconnection may have been to make, it sounds easy. And this is the secret behind anything great.Between the throbbing joy of “Flower Gardens” and the silky smooth string/guitar dynamic of “Sing Me 2 Sleep”, there lies an effortlessness which gives one the impression that through thick and thin, through perhaps fifty crossover genres, everything is going to be okay and we’ve all the time in the world to find that out. This record is no doubt Van Gaalen’s best for one simple reason – if he were a single contributor to a band, the songs from Skelliconnection and even Infiniheart could have stretched over five or six albums. The sheer output of material could have led to a collaboration with like-minded artists whose shared ideas could lead to a whole band based on this record. Unfortunately, as the textbook definition of a solo artist, Van Gaalen’s choice to work alone turns consistency into stale frustration. His last records, while worth more than one listen, depend on ideas that were fleshed out long ago. Those ideas can be found all over Skelliconnection, free of the frustration and headaches that come with adult responsibility. Give the record a listen, its fun to be a kid again.Eric Séguin is a writer living in Montreal.