Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Kevin Suggs – “The Cuts”

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Patrick J Gibbs

Did you ever wonder what the world would be like today if ’50s sock hop music had been as interested in environmental stewardship as it was in where, oh where, could one’s baby be? Okay, neither had I until listening to Kevin Suggs’s contribution to BoW Volume 61 while on a walk through a small woods near my house. “The Cuts” opens with familiar and nostalgic bass and guitar lines that would put any Boomer at ease. The playing and production are sublime, which should come as no surprise considering Kevin Suggs’s résumé includes names Brandi Carlile, Cat Power, The Dusty 45’s, Eddie Vedder, The Shins, and The Walkabouts. The first hint that this track is not simply a stroll down memory lane comes with the recitation of a series of musical terms. A pedal steel guitar interlude then transports us to a sleepy coastal town where we are introduced to a wise young fisherman. A doo woppy chorus and some heavily reverbed guitars and vocals move us further on up the road to a farm on a fertile plain, into the city, and across time. “The Cuts” is chilling in its beauty and heart warming in the images that Kevin Suggs conjures. It is good to know where one’s baby is. I do wish that we could set the clocks back and dance into that golden age to teach past generations more about the impact their concrete and metal plans will have today.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Nick Droz – “There Goes the Neighborhood”

Posted on October 12, 2020 by Sam Russell

No, this song is NOT a cover of the 1992 Body Count* classic but a song written (per Nick) as “part of a prompt-based project . . . for one of the Hugo House’s literary series. Inspired by the construction of their new building, the prompt they came up with was ‘There Goes The Neighborhood.’”

This song seems a slight departure for Nick coming after his more straightforward rock/Americana album Safe Bet, released in 2019. However, it seems like many of us, Nick has been using quarantine over the past 6 months to experiment with more informal recordings, judging by his great new EP released under the moniker Mono A Mono.

That EP, like “There Goes the Neighborhood,” was recorded by Nick on his analog 4-track with Nick playing all the instruments. These combined releases (as well as hopefully future ones) make a strong case for musicians of all stripes to attempt similar recordings for both the inherent creative challenges and the resulting pure sonic analog bliss when done correctly.

On “There Goes the Neighborhood” Nick employs a Scott Walker-by-way-of-Thom-Yorke croon that elaborates upon (without contradicting) his usual vocal approaches. With some tasteful Daniel Lanois-esque reverb on both the vocal and tom pattern, a baroque ’60s California pop vibe comes across despite the relatively austere arrangement.

The lyrics come off as slightly ambiguous; they could be interpreted as being the POV of two neighbors with clashing ideologies or the same individual with conflicting reactions to (as far as I can tell) an undefined incident or circumstance altered.

This ambiguity can’t help but make me hear the song as a partial commentary toward
the recent focus on suburban neighborhoods in swing-states (especially those of Nick’s and my own home state of Wisconsin) needing to be “saved” by a certain current President. And one could very well hear as I do in Nick’s melancholy delivery, the disappointment of discovering your own neighbor’s opposing political beliefs and feeling your own optimism deflated once again.

Whether one buys into either interpretation or not, “There Goes the Neighborhood” can act as a soothing balm for those of us exhausted by the barrage of pre-election information and accusations as the days get colder and the skies turns greyer. It will assure you that you are not alone in your day-to-day battle with dread and search for small victories, wherever they may be found.

*for the unenlightened, Body Count was (and is?) the heavy-metal side project of Ice-T. “There Goes the Neighborhood” was the first single off their 1992 self-titled debut, which also included the controversial “Cop Killer” until Ice-T was pressured to remove said song from the album.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Red Weather Tigers – “Hello, Discordia”

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Levi Fuller

Ball of Wax supergroup Red Weather Tigers is back! Again! Proving their one-minute appearance on Ball of Wax 60 was no fluke, this band of miscreants – Marc Manning, Grumpy Bear, and THEATH – has delivered a fine homage to the goddess of strife, who is surely having quite a time of it these days. “Hello, Discordia” has all the swampy grit you’d expect in a song about an agent of death and mayhem, but the fascinating thing about the arrangement is that all that dirt is buried in the vocal track. The guitar, percussion, keys, and backing vocals that carry the song are all relatively clean and precise, humming along in a pleasant, bluesy manner. But when that vocal kicks in – and I’m sorry, but I don’t know which of our fine friends is behind the mic here – it’s all dirt and sass and low end, and it casts a pall of, well, discord over the entire song, making the whole thing fittingly unsettling. Here’s hoping poor, overworked Discordia takes a long, well-deserved rest soon, but in the meantime, this is a perfect soundtrack to her reign.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Holly Small – “I Don’t KNOW​!​”

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Michele Khazak

Have you met Holly Small? She sang lead in Wearbearcat! and was a prominent member of the Talking Heads cover band This Is Not My Beautiful Band. These days, Holly’s focus is on her original electro-pop music and electronic jazz arrangements as well as being a member of the (almost) all woman rock/soul band Grace Love and the Dirty Church. Okay, enough backstory. Holly’s piece “I Don’t KNOW!” gets off to a running start, spinning you until you’re dizzy enough to not know either. And then the next section hits and you’re grooving to a steady beat and a beautiful pop melody that slips off and drops you into dizzying spins again. And there’s certainly a story being told in the bridge section that returns to the steady beat and melody triumphantly. What can I say? I also don’t KNOW! but I really dig this tune.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Simon Henneman and Benjamin Thomas-Kennedy Duo – “Pysht”

Posted on October 7, 2020 by Patrick J Gibbs

Ready? Set? Go. Go. Go!

“Pysht,” by the Simon Henneman and Benjamin Thomas-Kennedy Duo, is a frantic guitar and drum dash across a million guitar notes and at least as many rasps of percussion. The track begins in the realm of late ’60s and early ’70s spiritual jazz (think a guitar version of
Pharoah Sanders or Roy Ayers Ubiquity on a strong dose of Dexamethasone) before Henneman (Diminished Men, Wayne Horvitz’s Electric Circus, Meridian Big Band) and Thomas-Kennedy (Fungal Abyss, Shitty Person, blouseusa) race down a sonic landscape that is at once cacophonous and meditative. The duo makes quite a racket before the track suddenly stops. I’d cry “too soon” or “more” if I didn’t like so much the Holly Small track that follows “Pysht” on Ball of Wax Volume 61.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: electric bird noise – “hearn-roberts live . . .”

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Levi Fuller

This track – whose full title, “hearn​-​roberts live at the spiritual center for the creative and sonically inspired 7​-​27​-​19 (song 4),” sums up its personnel and origins – is yet another piece of delightful, guitar-forward experimentation from our friends in South Carolina (hey friends in South Carolina: VOTE!). All I know about electric bird noise, apart from their state of residence, is that they play guitar. Based on this recording, and the fact that as far as I can tell it’s live and there’s only one guitar player involved, there is some looping involved, as well as myriad effects and processors. The piece is just as involved and cohesive as any of their recorded output – the only real clue as to its being live coming with the joyous applause at the end – making it clear that this is an adeptly composed piece of music performed by a well-oiled musical machine – in this case ebn/Hearn/Roberts. Maybe one day we can all play in rooms for each other again, and maybe one day we can travel around the country again, and maybe one day I can experience some version of ebn live. Dare to dream!

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Ball of Wax 61: Sceneries, Placements – “Guidance and Navigation”

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Levi Fuller

Our new Arizonan friends Sceneries, Placements – whose membership overlaps to some extent with Vir(us), whom you heard on Volume 60 – have graciously shared with us the title track from their majestic space-travel-themed (I think?) album Guidance and Navigation. The song wastes no time, dropping you right into the steady, shuffling beat and layers of fuzz that will carry you blissfully through the next five minutes of your life. Rhythm and fuzz are the defining characteristics of this track, but there is melody to be found as well: slappy, delayed guitar lines weave in and out, along with strange synthesized sounds that might be a voice through a vocoder, or some other thing entirely. This may or may not be your jam, but it’s exactly what I would want to hear on my headphones during a space walk – or while hurtling untethered through space to my doom.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Ainara LeGardon – “Ixo”

Posted on October 2, 2020 by Levi Fuller

“Ixo” is an excerpt from Ainara LeGardon’s stunning trilingual book/cassette boxed collection, Res-cue. The Archive in the Mouth, which I fee incredibly fortunate to have seen in person and held in my hands.  It is a beautiful thing on a number of levels, and if you live in a country where you can purchase a physical copy, you should do so right now. (With any luck we’ll have a proper review of the whole thing coming up. Watch this space.)

The lyrics to “Ixo” were written by Xabier Erkizia. The song evolved over a series of years from Ainara’s own work. As I peruse the book now (have I mentioned how freaking gorgeous it is? It has an audio-tape book mark for crying out loud)  I see that this piece – featured on Mixtape 2 of Res-cue – got its start as “Last Day,” which was a video before it was a song, but the song starts off Ball of Wax 44, our all-vocal installment. “Last Day” eventually became “Frío,” which I assume was in Spanish, and the piece now exists in Basque as “Ixo.”

As far as the music goes: it is stark and raw and brimming with feeling. Ainara LeGardon is, without question, one of my favorite people to hear sing and play guitar, and “Ixo” is a perfect example of why. Pick up Res-cue if you can, and if not go throw a bunch of money her way on Bandcamp.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Eggshells – “Unknown”

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Levi Fuller

Eggshells – Peter Verdoes, Sera Han, and Benjamin Verdoes – really know how to set a mood. “Unknown” combines ghostly voices, spidery guitars, and steady, centered drums in a way that leaves your head both swirling and nodding all at once. Which is appropriate, I suppose, given the lyrical reference to “ghost-hearted dancers.” Thirty seconds from the end, however, just as you’re finding your place in this ethereal groove,  everything gets flipped upside-down and cut in half. We are shown the door by a loose, untethered, looping phrase that offers no resolution, merely the invitation to skip back to the beginning and join the dance again.

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Ball of Wax 61 Songs: Gillian Frances – “Loose”

Posted on September 29, 2020 by Levi Fuller

Anacortes’s Gillian Frances makes her Ball of Wax debut with “Loose” – and what a debut it is. I’m a sucker for a good dynamic build – a song that starts up close and quiet, all hushed reverby vocals and guitar, and, like a slow-motion explosion, gradually ramps up to the point where it feels like it might lift you off your feet. “Loose” does all of this and more, anchored by Gillian’s stark vocals, which morph over the course of the song from a hushed falsetto to a full-throated cry that pairs beautifully with the overdriven lead guitar providing the final layer of sonic swell to push the whole song off a cliff. (And yes, that sentence was ridiculous, but I make no apologies.) It’s an easy song to lose oneself in, making it a perfect match for the lyrical content, which seems to be about the unsettling feeling of losing oneself in another. Here, though, we are not unsettled so much as delightfully enveloped.

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