of each song, while Choi wrote all orchestral arrangements. The collaboration resulted in a looser sound that maintained the structural complexity and pop sensibility of Vanderslice’s previous songwriting. Lyrically, Vanderslice reflects on his trajectory as a musician and performer and draws inspiration from the California landscape. "The Piano Lesson" recounts early memories of learning to play the piano as a child, while "After It Ends" imagines a performer destroying and escaping his venue at the end of a show. The romping "Convict Lake" is an autobiographical account of an overdose on LSD during a camping trip at this Sierra Nevada, California, lake. It was produced and recorded by John Congleton. In January 2012, Vanderslice left his record contract with Dead Oceans. He created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to start his own label and reached his $18,500 goal within hours of starting the campaign, which ultimately resulted in his ninth album, Dagger Beach. With Dagger Beach, Vanderslice pushed experimentation with analog production techniques to the forefront of his songwriting. For some songs, including "Harlequin Press" and "Damage Control", he tried to avoid familiar song structures by writing over improvised drum parts played by longtime collaborator Jason Slota. On the album, Vanderslice revisits the theme of navigating the California landscape as a metaphor for personal relationships: “Raw Wood” reflects on solo camping in Wildcat camp of Point Reyes National Park, while “North Coast Rep” describes a disintegrating friendship by way of a found photograph of the Sonoma, California, landscape. In conjunction with Dagger Beach, Vanderslice released his own full cover version of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs. The idea for the cover album came in August 2012, when Vanderslice performed Diamond Dogs in full at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, followed by a screening of Michel Gondry's cult classic, The Science of Sleep. After intensive rehearsing for a single show with a limited audience, Vanderslice decided to channel his creative efforts with Bowie's original material into an entire cover version of the album. It was released on limited edition vinyl in June 2013. Using the original album as a backbone to experiment and improvise in the recording studio with collaborators, Vanderslice altered lyrics, song structures, chord progressions, and titles of many of the songs. With full control of the production and distribution of his self-released albums and a commitment to quality control, Vanderslice had both Dagger Beach and Diamond Dogs