Ball of Wax 33 Songs: The Mantis Opera – “I Never Went Surfing”

Ball of Wax 33 features a few artists that I had never heard before receiving their submissions, among them The Mantis Opera. I don’t know how Mantis Opera mastermind Allister Kellaway found us all the way from Falmouth (Cornwall, UK), but several months ago I received a WeTransfer email from him with a couple of songs attached and no additional comment. Having wearied of faux-chatty publicist emails and adjective-heavy press releases, I found this casual drive-by approach compelling, and I downloaded the songs and gave them a listen. What I heard was new and exciting to my ears, and obviously the product of a lot of work on Kellaway’s part. Each song was packed with ideas and colliding sounds and insane changes that shouldn’t work but did. Maybe if you took the bedroom psych approach of a Tame Impala and add ample doses of prog you might have some idea of what I’m talking about, but it’s really best to just check out this song – and you might as well just go ahead and get the whole album over at Bandcamp while you’re at it. Thanks for finding us, Allister!