Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Electric Bird Noise – “Hearn-Roberts III”

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Levi Fuller

With each new submission to Ball of Wax – this is their third – Electric Bird Noise has upped the ante, each time bringing in more instruments, more structure, and, dare I say it, more muscle. “Hearn-Roberts III,” from the newly released album Hearn​-​Roberts​-​Strong​-​Watts, continues and solidifies this pattern. The addition of Bradley Wayne Roberts’s commanding bass lines, over Jason Hearn’s rocksteady drum work*, is a perfect complement to EBN’s signature off-kilter guitar work, which employs loops and an array of effects – along with a matched set of gifted ears and hands – to turn the guitar into a new instrument (perhaps we should call it the electric bird). I would be perfectly satisfied to hear much more from this or any of the previous iterations of EBN, but I can’t help but wonder what the next addition might be. Horns? Taiko drums? Bagpipes? Whatever direction Electric Bird Noise chooses to go, I am along for the ride.

*As you might have guessed, this album and its tracks are named after the players. This is the third piece on the album with this particular lineup.

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Younger Youngest – “The Fire”

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Lattney B. Jones

“The Fire” is mood music by San Francisco’s Younger Youngest. It moves along gently on dual-note chord forms and introduces in succession a handful of other guitars that each serve to color in the spaces of the mood. The first few guitars softly color the brighter places, but it’s a crisp, scaly serpent of a guitar that brings the most severe tints and threatens to darken the image. The thing that keeps this from happening is China Langford’s voice.

With a near-whisper of breaking-point anguish, Langford presents to us the mythic woman-done-wrong, the one that seeks to save the wayward soul of her lover despite the dangers and depths of disappointment. Even when her voice leans into the chorus, she holds back, saving every spare nuance of passion and emotion for the work she feels she must do, which serves the song better than anything less restrained could do. During both visits of the chorus—the song’s loudest points—even the drums show impressive self-discipline.

“The Fire” comes on slow and Younger Youngest are in control of its every lick, spit, and spatter.

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Doug Hood and the Wholly Heathens – “Fire at Captain Mike’s”

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Lattney B. Jones

The rapture, the apocalypse, the final battle between good and evil (too soon to namedrop Ragnarok without sounding like a total nerd), the Second Coming of Sam Russell: whatever you want to call it, Doug Hood (née the aforementioned Mr. Russell) and the Wholly Heathens—a cast of characters including actual musicians and very possibly an entire bar crowd—are bringing it by way of Captain Mike’s, a hangout in the primary heathen’s hometown. Naming several gals who have been scorched in various ways, Hood claims there’s been a “Fire at Captain Mike’s” and promptly calls for beer and having a little fun, despite the dancing having come to an end. But we know that the partying never really stops for those who have seen “the future in the flames,” and even while Captain Mike’s may be a metaphor for something bigger and more terrifying, the band let nothing stand in their way here.

Doug Hood and the Wholly Heathens’ “Fire at Captain Mike’s” may essentially be a rewrite, rearranging, and reimagining of Sam Russell and the Harborrats’ song of the same name (a non-secret the Prophet Hood/Russell openly shares), but that’s not the point: the fire, the beer, the fun—the ages-old Corinthian maxim, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die”—THAT’s the point. The crazy thing is, carried along by a mutant country/gospel rave-up complete with wild horns, wah guitars, wurlitzering organs, and a barroom choir, you feel too alive to believe for a second that you could ever die. Or maybe it’s already happened and this is the other side? If a fire at Captain Mike’s is what it takes to transcend this plane and dance into oblivion with this crew of heretics, then grab the matches—I’ll bring the butane!

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: The Foghorns – “Middle Class Art”

Posted on June 18, 2019 by Levi Fuller

The Foghorns are not a folk band. Lead Foghorn Bart Cameron may have some folk-ish tendencies – a deft way with common language and a limited set of chord progressions, a propensity for storytelling and sticking it to the man – but the Foghorns are a rock band through and through, and a damn good one. I have rarely seen Bart play an acoustic guitar, and earplugs are usually a good idea when catching the full band live. There’s a good deal of salty language involved. Guitar solos – and the occasional bass clarinet solo – are featured. And yet what we have here is another side of the Foghorns, and a decidedly folky one. Bart’s dusted off the acoustic, there are no drums, and – is that a fiddle I hear? Something must be riling up our friend if he’s feeling the need to go full folk here. (Let me just say: I love me some riled-up Bart Cameron.) And that something is, well, the art world – or at least the headline-grabbing, multimillion-dollar-auctioning, faux-provocative, self-satisfied world of the likes of Jeff Koons and Charles Saatchi. Prepare yourself for a full-blown,  oral assault on the ludicrous system the ruling class has set up for the “appreciation” (and I do mean that in the fiscal sense) of “art,” with all the righteousness and wit of Woody Guthrie when he wasn’t on the government’s dime. And, as Bart notes, “This was somehow before Jeff fucking Koons sold another shitty fucking sculpture, this time for 95 million.” I usually don’t turn over track reviews to the artist in question, but what the hell, I’m just handing Bart the mic on this one: “For an age deeply in need of introspection, insight and meaning, we’ve got Koons. Fuck. See all other corporate art in all other genres for similar fuck this fucking shit.”

Fuck this fucking shit, indeed. But all hail the Foghorns.

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Schruggs – “Anyhow”

Posted on June 18, 2019 by Lattney B. Jones

Joshua Schramm and Kevin Suggs have played together before as part of a larger ensemble and their reciprocity stands out on “Anyhow.” Under the name Schruggs, they grace Ball of Wax 56 with this buoyant roots-pop number that functions as a bittersweet ode to love lost, and they sound like a human portmanteau, an amalgam of the best qualities of two artists serving a single purpose.

Schramm delivers his message in a comfortably homey drawl, accompanied by a fingerpicked acoustic guitar that chimes out a melody that will stay with you long after learning of arms haunted by the ghost of an embrace and the admission of having thrown it all away. The end of each gilded lick is given space to ring by an absent or unaccented fourth beat from the otherwise chest-thumping percussion that may be live, electronic, or maybe another near-perfect combination in a song full of them.

Be sure to listen to “Anyhow” on headphones at some point, because there are several sonic elements—such as a buried vocal coo that colors parts of the song in a very different hue—that are best experienced with the music up close and personal. And speaking of up close and personal, be sure to catch Schruggs at the Ball of Wax 56 release show this Thursday, June 20, at 8pm at The Blue Moon!

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Ball of Wax 56: James Kelly Pitts – “Rose Colored Wine Bottle”

Posted on June 17, 2019 by Levi Fuller

We’ve heard James Kelly Pitts in many modes: lo-fi weirdo, pissed-off polemicist, field-recording dronemonger, climate mourner, and more. “Rose Colored Wine Bottle” is possibly the most straightforward track I’ve heard from him – a slow, gorgeous, meditation for finger-picked guitar and James’s hushed baritone, backed by subtle swells of steel guitar. The subject seems to be a tragic figure, the tone set with the opening line, “She picks up a rose colored wine bottle and begins to say, ‘All that time I waited on somebody has just been a waste.'” A series of images follows probing the depths of faith and addiction. As you might guess it’s a pretty bleak landscape, but there are moments of light and even laughter – although probably of the bitter sort. There is no redemption to be found here, but there is beauty – as there always is – in the darkness, so we might as well surrender to it. In the words of our protagonist, “my glass might always be half-empty, but it’s never too early in the day.”

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Chris Moore – “Threads”

Posted on June 17, 2019 by Levi Fuller

Our old friend Chris Moore (last heard on Volume 49, first heard on Volume 2) returns with the gorgeous “Threads,” from his new EP Sunday Painter. The song starts with a quiet, spare guitar part and Chris’s voice, quiet and clear. You can hear the room in the recording, and within a few bars you’ve probably got it pegged as stripped-down bedroom folk (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Yet somehow, less than a minute in, you’re suddenly surrounded by a full band, swirling guitars – is that an orchestra? In less deft hands this dynamic excess might all come across as a bit much, but here it’s exactly right. The song continues, alternating quiet verses and explosive instrumental choruses, and then somehow it gets even bigger on the bridge, cascading wind instruments, more guitars, Chris really opening up on the drums and with his voice. Then the dust settles and we’re back where we started, that quiet guitar and the line we began with: “Some of us get down and dirty, for they don’t come easy, the rare melodies.” If getting down and dirty is what it took to deliver this song, I sincerely hope Chris keeps digging for us.

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Darryl Blood – “Can’t Say It”

Posted on June 14, 2019 by Lattney B. Jones

Although the larger portion of Darryl Blood’s recent work has been instrumental—from soundtracks to gallery installations to his recent album, Parse (reviewed here on Ball of Wax!)—he has released a number of albums as a singer-songwriter and been a member of several acts (Tiltmaster, Hail Citizen, and ’90s Boston “no-wave” outfit Turkish Delight) wherein his vocal abilities were featured to some degree. In that respect, his song “Can’t Say It” from the new volume of Ball of Wax should come as no surprise . . . and yet it does.

Rolling along on some shiny 4/4 percussion, “Can’t Say It” boasts an arrangement that gives equal attention to each instrument in the mix (but the piano figures steal the show, from melodic accompaniment to straight-eight staccato chord forms to the tastiest trills you’re likely to hear) and showcasing Blood’s skills as a singer-songwriter. The biggest surprise here isn’t the song’s traditional structure, breezy sound, or homage to ’70s Laurel Canyon—it’s the subject matter. In less than five minutes, Blood delivers sunny pop cloaked in atypical metaphors that don’t try very hard to disguise the fact that this is a love song, albeit a “strange kind,” as attested in the song’s lyrical hook.

“Can’t Say It” is a maddening reminder of just how far modern pop music has strayed from the poetic wordplay and organic presentation that once defined it, but it’s also a welcome ode to those qualities from an artist who has built his career on left-turns and a refusal to settle into the norm.

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Ball of Wax 56 Song: Amanda Winterhalter – “This Is It”

Posted on June 12, 2019 by Lattney B. Jones

There is as much talent to be found in this world as there is beauty, and just as part of the challenge of seeing beauty depends on context and circumstance, so it goes for talent. Both qualities exist in and of themselves. I have seen Amanda Winterhalter sing accompanied only by her acoustic guitar and I can testify that she possesses a level of vocal talent that is almost supernatural in its ability to stir the soul.

Here’s where context and circumstance come into play. Ms. Winterhalter has put together a band that functions not as “back-up,” but as an extension of her own talent and vision. This wouldn’t work if the members of the band didn’t have their own individual talents to bring to bear—and they do so in spades on “This Is It,” a work of thematic and dynamic depth and grace that uses the eruption of Mt. St. Helens some 39 years ago as inspiration to delve into an Americana/gospel rumination that incorporates just enough Biblical imagery to keep it from evangelizing and instead evokes the death and rebirth of that holiest of spiritual experiences: love.

“This Is It” is a work built on the elements of tradition: a slow lilt composed of playful-but-powerful drumming, upright bass, electric guitar (both tremolo and buzzing), lap steel, and vocals that have to be heard to be believed (Ms. Winterhalter wails—WAILS—at points in a way so emotive and barely restrained that one could almost believe she was a member of Lazarus’s family). What the band and their leader does with these elements is both reverent and transcendent, using their talents to brilliantly contextualize the beauty of sound.

Amanda and her voice and guitar will be joined by Ed Brooks and his pedal steel at the Ball of Wax 56 show next Thursday, June 20th at the Blue Moon. Join us!

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Poor Neighbors – “First Time Caller”

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Zach Warnes

“First Time Caller” by Poor Neighbors is just one more reason to be excited about a yet to be announced release from this thoughtful duo based in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, WA. Taking a page from the handbook of their previous group, St. Kilda, Josh Morrison and Jon Wesley deliver a driving, up-tempo, pop masterpiece with elements of post-rock and lyrics that emote the pains of growing older and gaining experience. This song in particular seems to draw on a wide variety of influences both contemporary and otherwise, but what I found most striking and what I am often impressed with from this duo is the attention to detail and care they put into their work. This atmospheric track sheds the cheesy urgency that is often tied to more emotionally driven rock music and replaces it with gobs of patience and space.

It is clear to the listener that these fellows have a deep appreciation for and understanding of ambiance in their music. The dulcet sound of Morrison’s voice weaves beautifully with every shimmering reverb trail on this track. Each guitar and synth line stays in its place without ever becoming too busy or too up-front. All parts complement each other and enhance the song, creating a vastness and depth for Morrison’s words to ring out into, “. . . stand to be be alone long enough to really know what’s best?” Morrison calls for patience and wisely reminds the listener to check in with themselves before charging headlong into relationships or situations where even more patience and sound judgement will be required.

This is a solid effort from a great band. Can’t wait to hear more from Poor Neighbors down the road.

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