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Jul 11, 2014 Chad VanGaalen By Chad VanGaalen

A song is a chance overlapping of countless variables in an artist’s life. Anatomy of a Song is a place where those variables can be dissected and examined. In this edition, Chad VanGaalen discusses the track “Lila” from his recent album, Shrink Dust, out now on Sub Pop.

I was flying out to Seattle to play Sub Pop’s silver jubilee in July of 2013, and my dog Lila had had cancer for about a year. She had made a full recovery from what seemed like the end about six months prior to her passing. The day before I flew out she was getting reeeeeeally slow and tired, she had spent the last week in my studio with me just chilling out and being mellow and sweet to me. I knew that she didn’t have much more in her so I was reluctant to leave. She died the night before the show in my wife’s arms; Sara and her brother Christian took her to the mountains the next day and buried her body. I flew back home the day after and wrote this song for her.

The lyrics in the song are about me finding my wife Sara and meeting Lila for the first time as well. She marked a time in my life that I was falling head over heels with my true love. “A million gemstones falling down our stairwell” describes the sound of her nails sliding down our stairs at night. As she got older it got harder for her to make it down the stairs and we always feared she would slip but she never did. The painting on the inside sleeve of the album is Lila in her prime. She was 12 when she died, and her life was amazing.