I love anything “off kilter,” and Venice Rover’s contribution to Ball of Wax 69 is all about that particularly unsettling state of existence that lies in that transitive valley between the hollow hills of backporch country jam and the cloud-cloaked mountains of mystery tunings.
I desperately want to end my write-up there. Any further words from me, no matter how plagiaristically or pugilistically poetic they get, will cast no additional light upon “The Knife is the Hardest Instrument.”
But I never know when to quit. Besides, how can one not say more about a great song with a great title?
If you don’t find your steps immediately staggering and drunken upon the first licks of the guitar or forthright and upright at the understated piano accompaniment, then maybe the few other instruments (I think there are others in there. I want to believe somebody is playing a little buzzy-stringed toy or some plectrum device somewhere in the mix) will fill out the parts of your brain that should otherwise be moving as the music dictates. If nothing else, you can fall in step just before the first minute mark when things combine cinematic score exposition with an almost straightforward dance tune.
But you’ll get just less than thirty seconds before the vestibulo-ocular reflex goes all grain-wonky again and the best you can do is try to aim for the door as the guitars see you out. Whether or not you find yourself kissing dirt, grass, or concrete, the nagging voice that never leaves the back of your mind will be asking you: Was that yawing, yawning, half-mechanical, half-organic buzzing there the whole time?