If I thought that I was 2 for 2 interpreting what the artists on the new Ball of Wax were saying instrumentally and sonically about “the future,” Levi throws “Under Glass for Now” in as the third panel in this instrumental triptych and ensures that I return to the drawing board.
I want to say a lot of things about this track all at once but I can’t quite get it out without my fingers stammering and tripping each other up. The song seems to do so, as well, although far more gloriously. It seems to start before it’s ready to start, with the tin clatterbox percussion jumping the gun a split second before a deep, rich tone with synth-and-stringed counterpoint arpeggios begins proper and presents enunciated guitar plucks crispy enough to plant you firmly in an amplified desert somewhere west of El Topo and south of Eastwood/Leone. Once it’s underway, though, everything falls firmly into place.
This is a 2-minute, 18-second final score of the film we’re coming to know as “The Future.” Like any epic audio denouement, “Under Glass for Now” marches the whole narrative of WHAT HAS BEEN before our eyes/ears/hearts, but shows us at the very same time WHAT WILL BE—but in such a way as to render us incapable of fully comprehending, the guitar’s sinister melody informing us that, when the music’s over, we’ll remember what we’ve seen the way we remember a dream by lunchtime (remember the arpeggios? Understated, dreamlike). This, of course, is by design, for we’ll be drawn to listen again—and again—gaining just a hint of something more each time but still unable to grasp the whole picture. Is the future as uncertain as we’ve always feared?