Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Night Owl – “Lunar Ghost Phase”

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Levi Fuller

As you might expect, Night Owl’s “Lunar Ghost Phase” is perfect nighttime music. Specifically, driving at night. Specifically-er, driving late, late at night, the neon from empty bars reflected in the rain-slicked streets ahead of you. The interplay of guitar, bass, and drums keeps you company as you meander the city streets, trying to remember what it was that brought you out here in the first place, your foot slowly easing down on the gas pedal, your hand sneaking over to nudge up the volume knob. It’s late. You’re tired.

Then somehow you’re floating, dreaming, remembering . . . and then – inevitably, but shockingly to you – you’ve stopped moving, you’re perpendicular to where you just thought you were. Your head hurts, and your engine is steaming. There’s someone else out there, but you don’t want to look. Better just start the song again.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Saint Nefarious – “All Promise Is Bust”

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Levi Fuller

Our dear friend Lattney (see also Grumpy Bear, Holly and the Dead Saints)’s newest offering, “All Promise Is Bust” does not come from a happy place. You can hear the darkness creeping in with the first slow, heavy drum beats and sinister bass line. Your anxiety spikes as an Albini-esque guitar squall jabs across your brain pan. As this patiently bludgeoning dirge unfolds, Lattney intones a sad tale about a town where the children believe the lie of their own inherent exceptionality (a lie that is certainly one of White America’s greatest/most awful legacies), before ultimately finding themselves confronted with the truth of their own mediocrity.

Needless to say, I won’t be spinning this tune for my own five-year-old any time soon, but as a cynical old person and former jaded teenager of the ’90s, it hits a lot of my musical pleasure centers. Swirling, discordant guitars, angst-fueled dynamics, sung-spoken vocals that seem dispassionate and world-weary until it finally all becomes too much, and they become one with the sonic scream of guitar/bass/drum: “ALL PROMISE IS BUST!” Ironically, the brilliance of this song – and so much of Lattney’s prolific musical output over the past couple decades – would tend to disprove its own thesis. I never knew young Lattney B., and I’m sure the current version of him is not what he or his parents expected as a wee child of the American Southwest earning participation trophies and honorable mentions with the rest of us, but good lord, that boy was filled with promise, which has proven to be anything but bust.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Die Geister Beschwören – “A Cultivation of Reflective & Meditational Skills”

Posted on March 11, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

Before I get to the psychfolk epic-in-miniature that is “A Cultivation of Reflective & Meditational Skills,” please allow me to share my love for this act’s chosen name: Die Geister Beschwören may not roll off of your tongue, but it sure rolls off of mine. And its English translation—“summon the spirits” or “the spirits conjured up” or some iteration thereof—warms my little soul. I am a man of science by trade and a yearner for spirituality by experience, an oft-terrified someone crushed by the vastness of the world, the universe, the whole of existence, who wants to believe in any number of things but demands proof and validation. Ghosts, spirits, spectres—these are the supernatural entities that remain in the spaces of my mind where desire meets imagination long after the demise of holy trinities, hobbits, and space operas.

The music of Die Geister Beschwören brings me back to those spaces and swells my imagination enough for it to rub shoulders with the boundaries of what I am able to trust or believe. “A Cultivation of Reflective & Meditational Skills” is so aptly named that I am convinced the artist may have composed the music to match the title and not the other way around. The Cultivation takes place primarily across the first two minutes of the track as guitars at first spy warily and then ease themselves into the nest of a synth drone sparsely decorated with the most minimal of bells. Once comfortable in their surroundings, the guitars ebb and flow, advance and recede, swell up and fall back—and from somewhere far off a lap steel or a singing saw or a wailing soul joins in and announces the arrival of a male choir wordlessly calling out exactly the tones that can bear one’s mind close enough to the edge of the veil to actually touch fingers with those beyond it, before all parties recede into the ether and leave you with a warm hopefulness that maybe next time an exchange might take place.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Sceneries, Placements – “Handful of Hope”

Posted on March 11, 2021 by Levi Fuller

I don’t know if Sceneries, Placements were thinking of Emily Dickinson when they concocted the delicately peculiar “Handful of Hope,” but the first thing that came to my mind as I pondered the title, and this piece, was the phrase “Hope is the thing with feathers.” I went and found the full poem, and it really does feel like this piece is a musical representation of it. As I sit here listening I can just imagine holding this little bird in my hand, this feathery embodiment of hope, watching it flex and flutter, hearing it coo and tweet, until, at last, it lifts off, never having asked a crumb of me.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Bike Monday – “The Snow”

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Patrick J Gibbs

Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you believe in love at first sight when it comes to a song? I do.

Listeners of vinyl records are aware that certain songs will grab you simply by the way their grooves appear on the platter. You can read the tonal differences within a track by the texture of the vinyl. There are songs that make your heart flutter when you turn the record against the light and see the tone shifting from soft to loud and back again; songs that make you swoon where you can sense the pulse and beat of the cut by the shimmer from the record’s surface.

You can, of course, read digital tracks in a similar manner on many modern music applications. Many songs do not distinguish themselves from others when viewing them. A common form is to have the soundwave peak early and then maintain more or less a long plateau until a quick fade at the end. Some, however, will make you gasp when you see their form on a screen for the first time.

When I saw the visual representation of Bike Monday’s contribution to Ball of Wax 63, “The Snow,” I issued forth a gleeful utterance and then a loving sigh. The waveform looked like a beautiful medieval castle blanketed in snow. I was excited to click play to hear this track and how Bike Monday crafted their song to build the form before me. The song opens with crystalline notes repeated from a synthesizer establishing a cool, dreamlike tone for the piece. A wall of fuzzy arpeggios drift in establishing a new layer atop the first. More synth washes into the soundscape and delicately delivered vocals fall in place. Drifting across the piece, tones and melodies stack, disappear. A coherent structure is formed with a strong foundation, transitional ramparts, and rising turrets.

Bike Monday has rewarded my initial reaction. I love “The Snow” even more than I did on first sight after listening to it.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Virgin of the Birds – “Moon Chariot”

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Levi Fuller

I feel like every time I sit down to write about a Virgin of the Birds song, I can’t help but comment on just how dang Virgin-of-the-Birds-y it is. And here we are again. “Moon Chariot,” Jon Rooney’s newest idiosyncratic gem, is a languid, dreamy slice of pop heaven, stamped all over with Jon’s songwriting calling cards. Obscure mythical references? Check. References to beloved obscure bands? Hello, Giantess and Storm the Palace! Totally out-of-left-field quoting of a hugely popular song from the ’80s? Come on, Noreen, you know it!

As usual, I have no idea what Jon is talking about here – I have a way of letting metaphorical lyrics just kind of wash over me without getting too bogged down in what it all means – but I adore how it all pulls together. The dreams of giants and serpents and winged horses, the love for Noreen, whoever that might be; it’s all beautifully evocative, both surreal and specific in just the right way, a technique Mr. Rooney has long-since proven his mastery of.

“Moon Chariot” is a musical treat as well, of course – relaxed without feeling lazy, joyful without being overly earnest – and he’s even got some multi-tracked group vocals in there to really up the Dexy’s Midnight Runners vibe. In short, another master class in weirdo pop songwriting from our dear friend Jon Rooney.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Elisa Flynn – “Stand Tall”

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Shannon García, Esq.

This song is reminiscent of something just at the tip of your tongue. It’s a song you already know and love. You haven’t actually heard it before. Yet it feels familiar. “Stand Tall” has a super ’80s vibe with the pulsating drum loop and the reverb effects on the guitar. It sounds atmospheric, with a floating, almost spooky, guitar line. However, the vocals feel assured, grounded, and assertive rather than ethereal and airy. Elisa Flynn’s voice has rich, velvet vibrato. Her voice perfectly evokes primal emotions and feelings. It is the voice you want to hear celebrate you in your victories and vindicate you in your losses. The juxtaposition of the upbeat drum loop, the atmospheric elements, and the groundedness manages to not fight itself but instead layers itself into a poetic complexity. Like a love song to the human condition. The song, to me, signifies struggle and hope. That even when we fall harder and further than anyone else, we can persevere and be seen, standing tall, in our power.

In short, I like it.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Mike Votava – “Broken Heads”

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

To hear a Mike Votava song is to find yourself wanting to call him up immediately and bypass the whole “getting to know you” thing and go straight to hanging out and laughing about life’s ridiculous inanities. I don’t know that I’ve heard a single shred of evidence that he takes himself too seriously as an artist* or even a human. Heck, every release on his Bandcamp page is “supported” by the guy’s fan account (c’mon, all of us artists do it, but Mr. V has the gonads to own the crap out of it with comments, even!).

“Broken Heads” is no different and thank the stars for that—I didn’t know I needed a song in my life that makes me picture a female Clint Eastwood circa Gran Torino, bolt-action and all, but goddammit, here it is. Riding a jangle-blues wave into a full-arrangement assault of giddy guitar parts and low low bass, “Broken Heads” drips with the sort of seemingly-off-the-cuff-but-surely-well-studied wordplay at which Mr. Votava excels. It’s jaunty and it’s fun and it’s too freaking short and I really want to dial in the crisp sound of that lead guitar and put it in every song I record. (*I take the first part back—the guy’s got killer guitar chops!) Plus, decoder rings get a nod!

BONUS: After you’ve fully integrated “Broken Heads” into your daily routine, go listen to the album on which it appears (Tuesday Groove Kabobs) and laugh like a damned fool (I did!) at “Leaves of Grass My Ass,” the greatest ode/rotten tomato to Walt Whitman in the history of music. Then, let’s all go to Seattle and make Mike Votava go out for a pizza with us.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Arthur C. Lee – “The Storm”

Posted on March 8, 2021 by Levi Fuller

I guess I should start by saying you’re welcome and I’m sorry for bringing you Arthur C. Lee’s snappy new single, “The Storm.” You’re welcome, obviously, because this sweet and boppy little number will provide some much-needed spring to your step and bob to your head as we finally round the curve on this multiply-traumatic winter and bear down into a spring of hope such as many of us have never lived through before. I’m sorry because, if you’re anything like me, this song will be running through your head pretty much non-stop for weeks to come. It will soundtrack your dreams, and you will wake up with it circling through your mind, wondering at first what classic pop gem you latched onto during your last trip to Trader Joe’s, before you realize no, it’s Arthur C. Lee’s “The Storm,” from the new Ball of Wax, and you’ll go listen to it for real just to set the right tone for the day.

Actually, you know what? I’m not sorry. Sure, earworms can be annoying, but this is an aural nightcrawler of the highest caliber, a tune that Brian Wilson himself would be delighted to have wriggling around in that big ol’ California noggin of his. Apology retracted! Now go listen to “The Storm” again.

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Ball of Wax 63 Songs: tidepools – “II. Yoyogi Park”

Posted on March 8, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

[Editor’s note: Ball of Wax 63 is available now for pre-order! Grab your copy now, and join us for a live streaming release show on Saturday, March 20th at 7pm PDT on Facebook Live!]

I’ve found myself introduced to several multimedia/multidisciplinary works in the last year. While I’ve yet to produce such a piece of art myself, the idea has long intrigued me, and it’s both inspiring and thrilling to see independent artists diving in, sharing their myriad talents, and essentially baring their souls for us.

“II. Yoyogi Park” is one such work and, if I’ve followed the right threads, is the second movement of a musical extension of a poem narrative called One and Half of You by one Leanne Dunic (who I’m hoping is the artist here called tidepools). I have not yet read the book, but my feelers are out for a copy. In the meantime, I have fortune and Levi to thank for bringing into my orbit this gorgeous opener to the newest edition of Ball of Wax.

Melodically playful and lazily ebullient (work with me here) like an orchestra made of toys, synths, and offstage pianos filtered through a transistor radio as conducted by a microdosing maestra making up the composition on the spot, “Yoyogi Park” hooks the ear immediately and refuses to let go until the last chord, adding and stripping away layers in a way that insists on repeated listens. Full disclosure: I am a headphone listener because I need to hear those little nuances that make the best music come alive and build its nest in your brain. This is what “Yoyogi Park” has done for me and for that I am warmly thankful. Added disclosure: I’m having difficulty getting through this review because I have this song on repeat and I’m constantly interrupting my typing to whip my hands about in the air after the manner of the conductor I’ve imagined.

BONUS: Go to tidepools’ Bandcamp page and listen to all three movements of One and Half of You and become as enamored as I have with these aural confections!

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