Though you bear the weight alone
You are not alone
Like a well-crafted short poem, Spinster’s “Wait Alone” expresses so much within its brief form. Twice repeated lines echo against somber, lo-fi instrumentation then fade out. An undefined isolation folds into a quiet wash of synthesizer. A simple melody is introduced changing tone and feel. What was once heavy lightens. A dread weight is shared, perhaps to be lifted, and “Wait Alone” closes within 50 seconds.
The sound of an orchestra warming up and a smattering of applause provides the transition from the preceding track to James Kelly Pitts’s “T0ngu3.” Where Alejandro Magaña Aviña brought us a mini-movie soundtrack, James has given us a soundscape for some other, stranger experience. The 8-bit sounds and head-bobbing beat call to mind a goofy video game, with strange interjections of human voices and almost-human almost-voices adding another layer – perhaps interference from a neighbor’s cell phone, or a local TV station cutting into the signal from your Sega set? Before you can wrap your head around it all there’s a busy signal (do people even know what that is anymore?), the end sequence is playing, and you’re not quite sure if you won or not. At least you know you can always play again.
Alejandro Magaña Aviña, who first came our way via the TELEPHONE project, has returned with a brief, yet cinematically evocative orchestral piece. “Postales” (whose title translates to “Postcards”) appropriately calls to mind a series of images, packing quite a few scenes into its less-than-two-minute running time, almost as if an entire movie score had been compressed into 113 seconds. We have (at least in my mind) blissfully dancing fairies, a shock and a scattered chase, a sneaky stalking hunt through the woods, someone hiding behind the bushes, and a last-minute rescue from the heavens, deus ex machina-style, as the credits roll. Your mileage may vary, but without a doubt, these postales are worth flipping through again and again.
Tinty guitars, Western fanfare, brilliant dissonance, church organ lines, and an all out epic build up. This song plays a bit like an old western silent movie in black and white. Except, with electric guitars and organs. The song has moments where the tension builds and builds, only to release into a bit of an organ fugue followed by that surf-esque guitar sound. There is a great deal happening and a lot of listening to be had in the less then two and a half minutes of “Red Blue.”
Triskaideka is an instrumental band from Seattle. They borrow some surf rock sounds, though don’t fall into that category by any means. Likewise, they seem to have their psychedelic moments, and yet again, they don’t fully fall into that category either. For their current offering on bandcamp, you will find a half dozen songs all worth purchasing and many listens, all featuring their signature organ, guitar, bass and drums combo.
With “Red Blue,” as well as their other songs, I like their clean execution. I like their ability to tell a story without words through their play with music. This song is dynamic, going from soft and reserved to loud and explosive. They tease out themes in the quieter sections with their organ and guitar parts. The six-eight measure makes you sway along. Everything fits together well. Beautiful instrumental parts perfectly fitting the song. It’s not so complicated that they lose the listener’s interest. Rather, they take you through the cathedral and on out through the desert. It’s easy to have your own movie play through your head while listening to “Red Blue.”
A stripped-down duo form of Triskaideka will perform at the Ball of Wax 67 release show on March 12th at the Chapel Performance Space. Join us!
“Gender Reveal Party” is my introduction to Tite Nauts. I’m drawn to the attitude, sarcasm, and drive of the band and this jam. “Gender Reveal Party” tackles a rather odd ritual for which many partake in today’s modern society. Rituals, which in the worst cases, and as referenced in this song, have resulted in terrible forest fires.
The song starts off with a straightforward bouncy lick while quickly getting serious and down to business. Robin’s vocals come in with utter enthusiasm for learning the gender of your baby. The tempo keeps up and drives forward. I can’t quite make out the lyrics on the chorus, but it seems to be something along the lines of pyrotechnics, explosions and forest fires burning pink and blue. And so I dance around my apartment like a maniac to “Gender Reveal Party” with my neighbors staring in at me thinking, WTF is up with this dude?
Tite Nauts are putting out the best local songs from Chico, California. I wasn’t too surprised to learn that this is where they are from. We don’t tend to get music this explosive and edgy up in the more mild-mannered Pacific Northwest. I remember growing up on the Punk-O-Rama mix cds in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Some of my favorite unheard of bands came from these compilations. Tite Nauts’ “Gender Reveal Party” is just that type of song from an unheard of band that I’d fall in love with.
Our newish friend Bryan Brophy has brought us something completely different for Ball of Wax 67 – a blistering, blown-out stack of heavy guitars and drum machines produced under the moniker Spritle. This is perfect Friday-afternoon-at-the-end-of-a-completely-fucking-ridiculous-week music, which is appropriate – for me as I post this, anyway. There are no dynamics, no letting up, just go-go-go, Bryan barking four-syllable phrases that seem to point to the divide that can arise between what one knows needs to happen in the world and what one is doing with one’s own self. Sure, everything is falling apart and we have a responsibility, but also, can’t I also just eat some damn cake? The chorus – which we don’t get to hear until the very end of the song, one of my favorite songwriting devices – lays it out: “you’re gonna change the world, don’t try to change me / you’re gonna save the world just don’t try to save me.” It’s unclear to me whether this is Bryan working out some internal conflicts, writing in the voice of a character, or just venting a semi-stream-of-conciousness rant over some loud fucking guitars? Any way you slice it, you’ll want to play this loud and repeatedly. Note to Bryan: More please!
I feel like we’ve used the term ‘supergroup’ a bit too much around here of late (i.e., like, three times), but E is truly worthy of the title – at least to me and likely many others who spent much of the ’90s rattling around the rock clubs and loft spaces of Boston, Allston, and Cambridge. I could probably write a book – or at least a long, rambling essay, you know the kind that goes along with a recipe for kung pao broccoli that you just looked up online and why do you have to scroll so damn long just to get to the actual recipe, what does this person’s neighbor’s dog have to do with broccoli? – about what the mere existence of this band means to me. But then you’d get sick of scrolling before I got to the song itself, so I’ll just say that in Gavin McCarthy (Karate), Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune), and Thalia Zedek (Come), the band E is composed of some of my very favorite musicians from a part of my life that contains some of my very favorite music. And it turns out they’re still making some of my very favorite music!
Let me be clear: “Any Information” (the title track from E’s forthcoming EP) is a JAM. After a quick four-bar march intro Gavin drops in with a steady, propulsive beat and never lets up, while Jason and Thalia’s guitars play off each other in a delightful manner, one bringing frenetic percussive attacks, the other bringing more melody and texture, occasionally unifying into a wall of trebly mayhem, both players also adding layers of noise from radios and other devices – and somehow I never even miss the bass. (This is not something I often find myself saying.)
It’s not all fun and games, though: The lyrics, delivered in a clipped rush of hushed urgency, are simple and repetitive, but communicate so much about this moment (both the broader moment we’ve been living through for some time, and this exact moment in history): in seemingly every aspect of our lives, information is so important, reliable information so hard to get. I don’t know when these words were written or what was on the mind of their writer, but hearing this song on February 24th and 25th, 2022, I can’t help but hear a refugee pushed across a border by forces beyond their control, or a helpless observer doomscrolling from across the globe, seeking information, any information at all: “any information that you have about my brother, any information that you have about this place.” It’s a darkly compelling counterweight to the rollicking noise it accompanies.
I am far from an impartial observer here: I was an instant fan of this band before I heard a note. That said, each successive release of their has only solidified that fandom and given me more reasons to keep listening. E is touring Europe this spring. If you live in or near one of these countries, go.
Has it really been over five years since we’ve shared a song from our Austin pals Guma? Apparently so. I was delighted to receive the band’s new album A List of Sightings in my inbox recently, and upon hearing “Mud Doctor” I had no choice but to include it in the all-important number 2 spot on Ball of Wax 67. Something about the deep-pocketed groove, compositional playfulness, and T.J. Masters’s deadpan baritone call to mind early 2000s Jim O’Rourke, one of my indie rock comfort foods. Two sharp guitar stabs dump us right into that groove, heads bobbing from the first beat. The rhythm section is steady as a rock with sharp syncopation on the verse, opening up to broader vistas on the chorus, even as the lyrics turn to the mud. That groove takes us out all too early, bass and keys adding a few flourishes here and there while the fader heads inexorably down.
Maybe it’s just that we’re two years into this pandemic, or maybe it’s the nature of the music itself, but something in these first couple tracks clearly has me and Matty thinking about the joy of live music. I would love to see this band live and have that end section just go and go and go, never devolving into a full-on noodley jam, just everyone grooving for days and leaving room for each other to have a little fun with the themes. (Yes, I am a middle aged man who likes Steely Dan and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Please do not let that cloud your appreciation of Guma.)
In conclusion: Guma! Come to Seattle!
[Editor’s note: Ball of Wax 67 is coming! And for the first time in two years we’re having a live, in-person, release show! Join us March 12th at 7pm at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center in Seattle for performances by Lacey Brown, Mt Fog, Summer Sleeves, Sun Tunnels with Seth Howard, and Triskaideka. Tickets available on Bandcamp.]
Lacey Brown is a wonderful addition to the roster of Ball of Wax contributors. The songwriter behind Poor Clare is an active Seattle artist with several albums worth diving into. “Thin Air” is a thoughtful and carefully crafted song with a deeply resonant theme for any listener. “Is it okay if I disappear into thin air” is the hook and theme throughout. It is one of those lines immediately relatable on many levels. And then, after the first chorus, it’s as if the songs disappears into thin air. The driving beat is dissipated into echoes and ripples like drops of water on a calm clear lake. A half time beat picks back up for a second verse with deeper reflective questions.
I want to see this Lacey Brown live somewhere in a Seattle venue. [You can! Try the Ball of Wax 67 release show! -ed.] Her music is beautifully layered, as in the song “Thin Air.” A seemingly simple acoustic guitar lays down the musical progression with background ambiance lightly building for the vocals to enter. A few more acoustic guitars enter at various points, never crowding the musical space but complementing it and slowly building the emotion. One of my favorite parts of “Thin Air” is after the first verse’s line “Vanishing the night” (I may have misinterpreted this line). An edgy bass line comes in and takes us into the chorus. That bass line, simple but elegantly well placed and executed does so much to transition and change the dynamics of the song.
All these well layered sounds and textures seem well suited for a live show. Equally suited for listening via candlelight on a rainy Seattle evening. Hopefully this will not be the last we hear of Lacey Brown on the Ball of Wax or in Seattle. I’m very impressed with how it all comes together sonically in “Thin Air.” The echoes, the ambiance, the effects, the instruments, the vocals, all the resonance between these elements is an amazing accomplishment and an enjoyable listen many times over.
Photo by Flickr user Eva the Weaver, used under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Now that we’ve reviewed all the tracks on Ball of Wax 66, it is of course time to get to work on the next volume! Ball of Wax 67 (winter 2022) will be the eighth volume of the (&$#*!) COVID era. And by gum, I am very sincerely hoping to have an in-person release show for the first time in two years – I’ve even secured a date!
It seems there’s a lot of great music being made out there, so I’m going to keep this open and themeless. Send me whatever you’ve got that you’re excited about! No need to be a Ball of Wax exclusive; newly released or forthcoming elsewhere is totally fine.
Deadline: February 7th (earlier is great too.)
Guidelines: here
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions about how this works or what it is or . . . just, like, why? (Just kidding. I have no fucking idea, but if you can tell me that’d be great.
Please spread the word. I can’t wait to hear what you’ve got.
