Category Archives: Check Out This Song

Songs you should check out.

Ball of Wax 45 Songs: Mike Votava/Orphan Train

Unless your first name is ‘Weird,’ funny songs can be tough to pull off, but – as Mike Votava demonstrates on “Pants Are Optional” – if you have a severely constrained time limit and a sweet keyboard hook, anything is … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 45 Songs: Colin J Nelson/Frustration Club

BoW stalwart Colin J Nelson, realizing that the perfect thing to do with a 60-second song is to create a jingle, gives us this musically and lyrically adept “Treatment for Online Dating Promotional Content.” Ball of Wax Volume 45 (One … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 45 Songs: Storm the Palace/Brite Lines/Emory Liu

Leave it to Storm the Palace to squeeze more technical skill into an opening piano chord than I will obtain in a lifetime; also note that vocalist Sophie Dodds, with whom, despite the fact the she’s a sophisticated Brit, I’ve … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 45 Songs: Luminous Craft/The Vanities

Luminous Craft‘s Dominick Campbell (performing the BoW 45 release show September 2nd) opens the fragile “Don’t Fret, Charlotte” with a groovy Fender Rhodes riff, which he quickly abandons for fingerpicked acoustic guitar and an electric guitar gently strumming chords with … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 45 Songs: Ken Cormier/Natalie Quist

With “No Hall Pass,” Connecticut’s Ken Cormier (one of many BoW 45 artists also heard on the first One Minute Singles) pivots from lo-fi automotive absurdity back to the breezy, perfect pop I originally fell in love with way back … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 45 Songs: Sindri Eldon/Electric Dylan

Maybe it’s because I’m most of the way through volume 5 of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s epic autobiographical novel My Struggle, but I find something very Knausgaardian about the solipsistic, manic intensity of Sindri Eldon‘s “I Can’t Feel Anything” – and … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 45 Songs: Territory & Hombre/Sam Russell & the Harborrats

[Given the “One Minute Singles” theme of Ball of Wax 45, we here at the Blog of Wax have decided to embrace the spirit of brevity in our track reviews, which will come two at a time and one sentence … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 44 Songs: Ken Cormier – Auto Composition 27: Ding Dong

“Auto Composition 27: Ding Dong” is a goofy, free association little vocal ditty by one Ken Cormier, an unknown-to-me but accomplished Ball of Waxer from Connecticut. According to his bio, Ken is a teacher, performance poet, independent radio producer, and musician as … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 44 Songs: Karaoke Hottiez – Get on By

When I first wrote about Karaoke Hottiez (and that still-atrocious moniker) for volume 43, I had no idea that the band was the side project of one Matty P, he of the Foghorns choir, Plastic Jet Airline and all-around good … Continue reading

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Ball of Wax 44 Songs: Heather Duby – Miles to Meters

There’s a lot packed into the less-than-two-minute running time of “Miles to Meters,” the first recorded music the world has heard from Seattle expat Heather Duby in several years. A first it sounds like a solo vocal, Heather’s husky alto … Continue reading

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