Vic Bondi: “dBoon Was Born on April Fool’s Day”
My four-and-a-half-year-old son thought this song was too silly, but he doesn’t fully appreciate D. Boon’s contributions to our culture (nor Lou Giordano’s, for that matter).
Sonic Graffiti and Soapbox Soliloquy: “Luxury Condo”
An incredible amount of mayhem and diabolical, face-kicking energy packed into a 60-second package, straight from the mean streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.
Brian Michael Roff: “Snakes”
Our long-lost friend Brian returns with a weary, bleary, low-fi meditation on herpetological aspirations, ending with the timely suggestion that we “get to sheddin’ already.”
Sherbet & Champagne: “The Ballad of Ira Lee”
Terry Kyte, another old and farflung friend, reimagines Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” as a rock and roll rave-up about a college basketball player, and it slays.
Ryan Ogg: “After Hours”
“After Hours” creeps out of your speakers at a relaxed pace with eerie chord changes and vibes perfect for late-night introspection.
Tom Janci: “Sometimes”
Beautifully tasteful guitar playing is the high light of this breezy surf-rock tune with all the key elements of the sound.
‘lectrified spit: “Untitled”
“Grandma’s Theme” is one of my favorite tracks on John Mellencamp’s excellent and angry rocker Scarecrow, and ‘lectrified spit’s dusty and down the hall contribution to BoW 60 sits comfortably on the shelf next to that song.
Small Life Form: “Gengen”
Small Life Form brings a welcome addition to your glitch/ambient playlist with its track “gengen” which sounds like someone sanding down your hippie neighbor’s Tibetan singing bowls.
S. Eric Scribner: “Figments / Fragments”
Then, gradually – over the course of almost one minute – it dawns on you, as the Captain creeps cautiously between a few hundred dollars’ worth of otherworldly production design, he is the alien here.
Vir(us): “Rabies” (feat. Lattney B.)
The heavily-sedated Captain comes to, still unsure how he’d been captured – or even where reality ends and hallucination begins – but his stomach churns with the shadow of now understanding that very curious sign from (wasn’t it?) just a minute ago, bipeds inside a red circle-cross under which in block letters read the same word his strange new hosts chant monotonously over the sickening rhythm of their insectoid legs: “RABIES.”
Darryl Blood and Gordon Withers “Outtakes in D (revisited)”
Sharp piano notes meander their way through lazy cello slurs like raindrops on a lurid summer afternoon—a fine soundtrack for the intermission between dreams.
Phoebe Tsang: “Dream (Cat Remix)”
You pluck and slide your way through a cat’s dream, and as you listen you can’t help but notice the way the bird songs filter in through the open window and blend with the falsetto voice pulses, the clicks and hisses, and you look at your cat sleeping on the back of the love seat, and then the music stops and you wake up.
[Tracks 21 and 22 are from Chris and Brent Antal respectively, two halves of the now-geographically-separated former BoW stalwarts GreenhornBluehorn. -ed]
Greenhorn: “Turnstile”
With its ethereal keyboards, simple, descriptive lyrics, and slick vibrato croon, “Turnstile” manages to do in sound what the Imagists did in verse: capturing all the joy, sadness, tension, and beauty of a fleeting moment within a short, finely crafted burst of song.
Bluehorn: “What We Don’t Know”
The hooky melody of “What We Don’t Know” feels familiar and surprising all at once, and the winning combination of gentle guitar strumming, pulsing downbeat keyboards, and lyrical mysticism will make you want to put this into heavy rotation on your living room hi-fi.
Levi Fuller: “No Matter How Long”
Sparse, sleepy, harmonious, “No Matter How Long” is a sweet love note scribbled in haste and left on an unmade bed, sentimental but not saccharine, heartfelt in its rough outlines—something lucky to find.
Bryan Brophy: “Life in a Dollhouse”
In one mere minute, “Life in a Dollhouse” delivers an inventive chord progression, a beautifully syncopated melody, luminous background harmonies, and a compelling narrative wherein our suffering hero feels trapped in his own dollhouse-mind, yearning to be “out there” in the world where life proceeds happily without him—an ideal tune for the quarantined listener.
Sun Tunnels: “Fall Forward”
Deceptively simple and easygoing bedroom-pop instrumentation cleverly masks the twists and turns in this elegant slice of early ’90s sunny and self-aware nostalgia, complete with delightful toy piano and organ flourishes.
Black Ends: “My Own Dead” (demo)
Black Ends trade in their usual electrified guitar squiggles and pulsating rhythm section for a rollicking solo nylon guitar arrangement with bluesy undercurrents, highlighting the full expressive range of Nicolle Swims’s elastic and otherworldly vocals.
Sarah Pasillas: “Hot Head”
On the one hand, this song is a dreamy dive into a well of echoing vocals, lush guitars, and intricate basslines, while on the other hand you find all of that woozy sound contrasting fascinatingly with the lyrics about dealing poorly with anger, and in the end all you can do is sigh about it all.
Virgin of the Birds: “Lila the Werewolf”
Lila the Werewolf, based on the Peter S. Beagle story of the same name, is a classic VotB number in miniature, a simple verse and a sort of chorus, steeped in a love of horror, telling a tale of the horrors of love.
