Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Green Light Cameras – “The Joke That Went Too Far”

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Levi Fuller

Green Light Cameras plays Ball of Wax 63 off with “The Joke that Went Too Far.” This bitterly breezy tune was written in response to my prompt for Ball of Wax 62 – write a song in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election – but, due to my lack of inbox organization and the overflow of brilliant submissions I received for that volume, I was forced to roll it over here, to the first volume of 2021.

Interestingly, the delayed release both amplifies and mutes the song’s original intent. The amplification comes from the added perspective, since December 2020, of just how far the awful, unfunny joke that was our 45th president went. On the other hand, the lack of context – appearing at the end of a collection of songs with a range of subjects and perspectives – means the listener may not apprehend just who is the target of this song’s meticulous ire. Depending on how one hears them, these words could be directed to a historical dictator, a terrible boss, a maniacal bus driver, or a high school bully. As such, though, it all still works, as an ever-unspooling list of burns (“you’re a fishing line without the hook / a dusty shelf but not the books / you’re not the clock, but the missing minute hand . . .”) set to a soothing lounge beat: poetic yet pointed, evocative yet disgusted; whoever this song is about, GLC is fucking over them – a sentiment we can all appreciate, whether about a former president or a former friend.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Ken Cormier – “Trash Man”

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Levi Fuller

“Trash Man,” from Ken Cormier’s stellar new album Old King Cloud, is a thoughtful character study, a simple portrait of a man who seems to contain multitudes – and it all starts off with a brilliant AC/DC nod: “He was a trash man / he kept his motor clean / he smoked a big cigar / and ran a magazine.” Those four lines right there already tell you the subject of this song has more going on than you might think at first. Trash man, motor, cigar, sure, checks out – wait, he ran a magazine? But wait, there’s more. This publishing maven – also an ingénue, we find out later – is thoughtful, mysterious, much more than he seems at first blush, giving autograph-seeking kids heart attacks and secretly recording barbeques. Based on what I know of Ken Cormier’s work, it’s entirely possible that this whole song started as a series of words that just work together. Once you hear “he was a maven and and an  ingénue / he made a secret tape recording at the barbeque” it will leave a permanent groove in your mind, and I will never hear “You Shook Me All Night Long” the same way again. But in addition to the playful flow of words, this song does tell a story. It brings you into a new world you never could have imagined, and leaves you wanting to know so much more about this trash man, his magazine, and his secret tape recordings.

And I haven’t even talked about the music yet! “Trash Man” keeps a slow, steady pace – perhaps like a garbage truck making its way down the road, or someone thoughtfully flipping through records at the store – but the melodies, progressions, and production are all classic Ken Cormier pop gold. Hell, I only just now realized this song has no chorus and it’s still catchy as hell. Who needs choruses? Not Ken Cormier.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: The Weird Winkers – “Span the Great Divide”

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Shannon García, Esq.

This week marks the anniversary of the week of first dates my husband and I had 11 years ago. One of our first dates was a Ball of Wax release show. That was a bright time of new feelings rising to the surface. Anticipation. Nerves. Excitement. Dreams. That time 11 years ago stands in stark contrast to the state of the world during this year’s week of dates. Things can feel a bit stale after a year of quarantine and isolation. Suspended and stagnating in inertia, yet bathed and bubbling in anxiety. I’ve never before had so much insight into the mouse on the wheel before.

What am I going on about? I’m not quite sure, but this song by The Weird Winkers is very right now. It has a leisurely pace, giving it the feeling of friends playing folk songs in a rec hall, whilst also buckling under the perilous weight of frustration from seemingly intractable problems. The perceived futility of advocating for positive change when the tendency of inertia is to stick with what feels safe. And that it may feel safer in the middle. However, between two diverging points is a far cry from safe. When what may actually be needed is a bold gesture to span the great divide, don’t compromise when it comes to integrity – and do listen to this song.

Piano rings out into the open space, vocals and bass are up front, and guitars fill in the background with a clean and concise solo from the electric. This is a good song and I love the way Brian’s voice complements the arrangement.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Tomo Nakayama – “Birch Tree”

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Uncle Broccoli

“Birch Tree,” by Tomo Nakayama, is a slow, gorgeous knife, a knife that teases the skin on your belly, just above your navel, not enough to draw blood but enough to leave a little white mark so you know it has been there. It’s a musical phrase that runs its sorrowful, melancholy pace up and down your front steps over and over, its fist reaches out to knock on your door, only to fall back limp again and again. And you want to know what’s really messed up? You’re inside waiting for that god damn knock. You want to let it in. You want to feed it and bathe it and sleep with it and love it forever but it will never ever knock, never.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Maggie O’Hara – “Worth the Wait”

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Jon Rooney

Maggie O’Hara makes her debut contribution to ye olde Ball of Wax with “Worth the Wait,” an uncluttered voice and ukulele song written by O’Hara and recorded by scene stalwart and bearded Cascadian musical guru Colin J Nelson. “Worth the Wait” addresses the bizarre state of isolation and postponement the world’s been in this past year, offering the kind of supportive, hopeful encouragement we’ve all needed and continue to need as we near the end of this mess. The lyrics are refreshingly sincere without coming off as Pollyannaish, acknowledging that “the world is a cold, cruel place” before assuring “though it’s dark right now, it’s worth the wait.”  Structurally, O’Hara takes a simple three chord repeating structure and adds variety in terms of dynamics, shifting strumming patterns, and clever variations on the main melodic motif, matching musical shifts with lyrical changes. All of which is mighty impressive considering O’Hara is new to both writing and performing. I really hope that this is just the start of O’Hara’s musical odyssey and she builds on her taste and initial musical skills to contribute more to the expanded Ball of Wax universe in post-pandemic volumes to come.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Amanda Winterhalter and Rebecca Young – “The Bump Room in L.A.”

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Patrick J Gibbs

Before listening to Amanda Winterhalter & Rebecca Young’s “The Bump Room in L.A.,” my favorite Prince-inspired song was Bill Callahan/Smog’s “Prince Alone in the Studio.” Originally written for The Bushwick Book Club Seattle’s January 2021 showcase featuring songs inspired by Prince’s memoir The Beautiful Ones, Amanda and Rebecca’s collaboration on “The Bump Room in L.A.” began with a shared reading of the book and the passing of thoughts and ideas about and inspired by it. Together they transform Prince’s words and world into bumping feminist anthem.

Amanda’s vocals are delivered with such soul and conviction that the lyrics pulled from Prince’s memoir and their meaning become hers. “I live by the Feminine Principle. What you imagine is critical. Time is a lie. We’re all changeable. Create your life. Just try.” Damn. That’s inspiring. But wait, there’s more. This is a Prince-inspired song. It’s sexy. It’s steamy. At times it’s racy. But it is Amanda and Rebecca, not Prince, who set the tone and call the shots. Rebecca’s bass pulses and throbs. She finds the space between the notes to help dim the lights to accent Amanda’s most sultry lines. Contributing to the bumping atmosphere are pianist Jason Staczek and Moe Provencher, whose percussion tracks and production add the perfect amount of perspiration.

“The Bump Room in L.A.” is a much funkier song than Smog’s “Prince Alone in the Studio” and is a tribute better suited to an artist who worked closely with and celebrated women musicians throughout his career. Importantly, Smog’s work relies on a foreknowledge of Prince in order for it to come together, whereas Amanda and Rebecca build upon material left behind by Prince and elevate their song beyond his orbit so that it stands and succeeds without necessarily knowing their inspiration. Though, knowing “The Bump Room in L.A.” was lifted from the pages of The Beautiful Ones adds a layer of hilarity to this banging number.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: KO SOLO – Quarantine Boogie

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Amanda Winterhalter

I think I first heard Kate Olson play solo at the Bourbon Bar at Columbia City Theater. Years ago. Pandemics ago. Maybe it was a century ago, because Kate Olson always seems to transcend time and space. And yet time and space are where she really holds it down, because one of the first things you notice when you listen to “Quarantine Boogie” is the effortless groove in the space between her notes, then the perfect leap from here to there, like a saxophone constellation. And then you hear this singular force delicately lay down each part on top of the next, a galaxy of horn bops.

When I saw Kate Olson some time and space ago at the Bourbon Bar, I was struck by her command of a song and a stage. The way she moves from one note to the next, or one instrument to the next, makes you want to do more with your life, or at least practice your instrument for a few more hours a day. But Kate is much more than practiced. Like some of those icons from a century ago, she’s got impeccable intuition and direction. She leads the listener where she wants them to go, and “Quarantine Boogie” levitates us from the couch to the living room dance floor. Literally providing the levity we need to get some space from our space. This is the boogie I imagine Lisa Simpson and the spirit of Bleeding Gums Murphy duetting and dancing to in the nights of their pandemic pod. So if you’re together or alone, or alone together, let this boogie give you a lift to Space Time.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Datura Blues – Silence for the Apple

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Levi Fuller

With “Silence for the Apple,” the sprawling, long-lived collective known as Datura Blues brings us a brief, percussive meditation, created during a 20th-anniversary (!) improvisational retreat in the pre-Covid days of late 2019. It is noteworthy that six musicians contributed to this work, and yet it never feels crowded or overly busy. The percussionists work together as one to create a steady heartbeat for Sarah Jean Hart’s flute to impart its melodic wisdom. Once this rhythmic bed has been established, the flute slowly makes itself know, gradually adding more notes, climbing up and scaling down, reassuringly returning to the root note established at the beginning. Having said what it needs to say, the flute finishes its thought and the percussion ensemble gradually drops out, winnowing, all too soon, to nothing. This is the kind of piece that would work equally well as a ten to thirty minute immersive soundscape, but given that this volume of Ball of Wax contains about exactly as much music as I can fit on a CD, in this instance I appreciate the brevity.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Orion – Witch’s Blood

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

“Witch’s Blood” by Orion works a spell of converging time periods and ignites within me a nostalgia for events that never happened, or that I never experienced. It wastes no time in getting down to its main progression, with prickly guitars laying down a not-quite-hard chug-chug-rest-chug rhythm over billowing distortion and a touch of synth before everything dips into a riff refrain that will have metalheads kicking themselves in the ass for not having thought of it first. All of this and then repeat with plaintive vocals—and it’s damned effective.

What is this nostalgia? I want to say a blend of ’90s shoegaze and pre-post-rock postmodern rock but sounding current in a way that current music doesn’t. And with a touch of something I can’t quite grasp from my childhood, something early ’80s but lacking all of the overproduced flash. Which is to say that this all sounds more organic than it feels like it should. Before I can figure it out, the primary instruments suddenly fade for a final-minute anti-whizz bang ending by allowing some distortion to ring over the synths—which might be playing a different progression now! It’s a dreamy outro and it makes the song’s opening all the more impactful when played on repeat.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: NIGHT of 21 HOURS – “Flight Risk”

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Patrick J Gibbs

The origin of NIGHT of 21 HOURS is written on their Bandcamp page:

By the winter of 2020, approximately 9 months of COVID related isolation had started to wear on me. That’s when this started.

The credits on ISOLATION, their album released in February 2021, as listed on Bandcamp read:

written and produced by Mark Schlipper
performed by his computer

NIGHT of 21 HOURS is a modern collaboration. An exercise in which Mark Schlipper channels his thoughts and feelings into compositions which his computer then translates. NIGHT of 21 HOURS evokes feelings associated with this last year of disease, uncertainty, anxiety, and loneliness.

“Flight Risk” opens with a staccato electric drum pattern that repeats with the precision of a well-practiced roofer with a nail gun, hoping to get away from the hot summer sun. The drums are joined by a heavily distorted industrial guitar or keyboard voice that plays a few notes as it feels out its place among the raptap of the drums before settling into a dirty and driving groove. The instruments lock in, more effects are piled on, and the track takes off. The playing on “Flight Risk,” its structure, the seemingly intuitive nature in which the instruments communicate with each other, all have an organic quality that drench the piece with emotion. Mark’s computer is clearly an accomplished player and interpreter of music.

“Flight Risk” is powered by an urgency and a need to get somewhere. It is not a song about staying still. It is a song seeking an escape from isolation. Many of us are closer now to our desired destinations than we were just months ago when NIGHT of 21 HOURS was born. As such, it is a perfect coda to their album ISOLATION.

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