Gabriel Mintz is a newcomer to the Ball of Wax fold, and a most welcome one. I’ve been seeing him around and hearing his name for a while now, but for some reason I hadn’t sat down and listened to his music until he went ahead and sent me a couple songs. (I guess that’s kind of why I do this, now that I think about it.) I don’t know what I expected, but I must have expected something, because I was stopped in my tracks by the lush, dreamy psychedelia and beguilingly androgynous vocals of “Western Days.”
Like “Not Old,” the tune starts with a few chords strummed on an acoustic guitar and builds from there. Soft vocals and brushed drums enter, then come the backing vocals and layers of highly effected guitars and other instruments, all building to a gorgeous, textured musical landscape. The end result is something like Califone with a subdued Norah Jones on vocals – and I mean that as a sincere compliment. Gabriel won’t be able to join us at the Volume 36 release show on June 7th, but I look forward to seeing him play out soon. You should definitely grab his new record Future Wars on vinyl while it lasts.
Thank you for making this beautiful music!!
He was one of our first clients. Crazy dude.
Happened to find another batch of lyrics tonight, related to this volume:
http://gabrielmintz.bandcamp.com/track/western-days-2
Hope if other people know of lyrics of other _BoW_ tracks that are in the public realm, that they might share ’em too. And if artists haven’t made their lyrics public, but would be willing to, I bet many would appreciate seeing them in these comment spaces as well.
(And by “many” I mean many of us listeners.)