Ball of Wax 52 Songs: The Foghorns – “Bump”

Ball of Wax stalwarts the Foghorns offer up “Bump” on Volume 52, a rollicking workout that takes a page from some of the best work in the band’s catalog. Whereas last year’s outstanding . . . on a Dog’s Ass Sometime was a sort of meditation on aging and mortality, “Bump” is a call-back to the folk morality of 2015’s The Sun’s Gotta Shine with songs like “Ain’t I A Man” and “Sons and Daughters of the Molly Maguires.” After the band kicks things off in a barroom tumble, lead Foghorn Bart Cameron belts out “Bump / Another bird hits the window / like we’re living in paradise / and we’re killing it and killing it,” quickly sketching the details of a certain modern dystopia we’re all sleepwalking through. Trump is alluded to, as is American militarism and environmental disaster. For Cameron, this pervasive technocratic obliviousness is both a moral and social obscenity, yet, like all Foghorns songs, “Bump” isn’t dry, preachy or overbearing. It’s light, boozy and cathartic, danceable in the way that half-drunk folks respond to extended late night sets from the band at Conor Byrne or the Sunset. There’s no better band to soundtrack our boogie-ing into oblivion than the Foghorns.