Ball of Wax 70 Songs: Death Spa – “Cracked Eggs”

While I like to invent and toss around genre descriptions like I know something others don’t (but really because I want to coin a term that will one day become a hashtag and eventually a tired meme), I am struggling with an apt way of conveying the way that Death Spa’s “Cracked Eggs” strikes me. Perhaps because this well-less-than-three-minute wonder is so damned good. Really. As in, it’s frustrating to me that I could not in a lifetime come up with something so gleefully-yet-angstfully unhinged while still being slamming, rocking, and electrofunky enough to keep my toes tapping and my seated fanny wiggling.

And what is happening in the intro and at various points throughout? Is this a wildly treated guitar or a broken synth or both? And am I losing my sense of meter in my old age or has Death Spa cracked the prog code enough to play punk rock over it? And how can something seem recorded in completely different takes—maybe different studios, maybe even by different bands—still work better as a composition than Paul’s and John’s sections in “A Day in the Life?” And who/how is singing what/where and can I refer to the vocals as “genre/gender-defying?”

I’ll not venture to answer my own questions. There may be no answers. What matters is that Mia, Levi, and Jonathan have thrown their collective creative muscles behind “Cracked Eggs” in a way that leaves you reeling after the first listen and bruised after repeated listens. Every time I hear this mini-epic, I pick up on something else. And yet it doesn’t seem to be heavily-layered—it’s just well-written. I’m still not sure exactly what’s being said throughout, but I feel seen in my own dysphoria and I too may have cracked my eggs.

Catch Death Spa live at the Ball of Wax 70 release show on February 2nd at Southgate Roller Rink.