After six years of marriage, John Vanderslice's wife told him it was over as he returned from a European tour. So started the next chapter of Vanderslice's life, and so begins Dagger Beach, which is a less a "breakup album" than a radical reorganization of one's priorities. Computers were ditched. Several instrumentals ("Interlude #1," "Song for the Landlords of Tiny Telephone," "Interlude #2") slow down the process and give Vanderslice a chance to catch his breath. And a song like "Song for Dana Lok," with its burst of optimism at just track three, suggests that the lives in the balance aren't in for long dark nights of the soul, but rather for a few trials mixed in with a celebration or two and plenty of changes. Those changes are everywhere. Vanderslice's singing continues to evolve from his early records. The harmonies and avant-garde arrangements float somewhere between the stationary atmospheres of Robert Wyatt ("Song for David Berman") to the off-the-cuff whimsy of "Harlequin Press" and the more ambitious rhythms of "How the West Was Won" and "Gaslight."