Learn How to Hang

David Vandervelde’s very clothes were ablaze that day in his Nashville basement. And the only thing that was ever going to put the flames out was laying “Learn How To Hang” to tape. How else does a song so immediate come to be? The repeated mantra of its title, set to an exhilarating, tightly-wound Buckingham-like lick, is just as much Far East philosophy as it is the most serious of stoner advice. It’s a self-effacing moment of clarity under the heat of a blowtorch. Same goes for its brother jam, “Wave Country,” with its galloping, sunburst metal and inner-bitch-slap hook, “You ain’t any cooler in the shade.” And how could we, in good conscience, ever sit on songs so immediate for any longer than one red-hot heartbeat? Some jams can’t simply be placed on a release schedule months in advance. Songs like these must be loaded in our bow and shot out into the world.