Ball of Wax 57 Songs: Bear Clouds – “With Us”

Posted on August 28, 2019 by Lattney B. Jones

There is very little music that has come out of my region of the country that has inspired me to proudly wear its influence on my sleeve or to incorporate its touchstones into my own style, so it’s difficult for me to know kinship with “the locals.” Portland’s Bear Clouds offer a bit of praise and acknowledgment to the PNW on their home page, and when I listen to their music, I understand what that local kinship must feel like.

Bear Clouds’ contribution to Ball of Wax 57, “With Us,” is full of declarations, from its firm and fulgent post-rock bassline to the straight-and-steady percussion that doubles down at the midpoint to the excellently-delayed guitar bits to Larren Wolford’s perfectly plaintive croon matter-of-factly describing a bit of a mess before asking, half-hopefully and half-knowingly, “there’s nothing wrong with us, is there?”

Or is he asking? In the same way the music carrying “With Us” resonates with my desire for regional pride, Wolford’s one-sided dialogue resonates a little too strongly with my own experiences navigating the treacheries of humans in a relationship being humans in a relationship. And so I stand by my claim: despite ending with a request for confirmation, “there’s nothing wrong with us” is meant as a statement. Half-hoping, half-knowing, but a statement nonetheless. In the same way Bear Clouds’ kick-ass rhythm section declares itself in every beat, Wolford’s narrator seeks to affirm through sheer will and audible evocation.

Don’t believe me? Just listen to the phrase’s last appearance in the song (provided you can shake yourself free from the sheer emotion of Wolford’s wail). There it is.

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Ball of Wax 57 Songs: Bodies on the Beach – “Coaster”

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Jon Rooney

Bodies on the Beach is a project from Planes On Paper‘s Navid Eliot, and “Coaster” is a dreamy, reverb-drenched slice of summertime indie pop. It’s a bouncy, well-structured and well-executed song; from the jangly, finger-picked electric guitars that suggest a decidedly Americana vibe to the chugging change-up on the bridge, “Coaster” feels fully formed and wholly realized. Eliot’s classically nasal indie-rock tenor sounds great on the track, which would feel at home on any well-curated road trip or hip BBQ playlist. If KEXP isn’t already all over this song, they’re nuts.

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Ball of Wax 57 Songs: Sex Hogs – “Bricks”

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Levi Fuller

Our newest volume starts off with an appropriately summery track from Northern California trio Sex Hogs. “Bricks” is warm and breezy, like a perfect sunny day, with just enough grit to remind you you’ve been sitting in the sand all afternoon. And, just like most summer days – and summer itself – it’s over before you’re ready. I appreciate the band’s unusual arrangement for what could easily be a typical verse/chorus tune, with the verse and chorus using the same chords (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Instead, the first verse brings us a pre-chorus to build up to the low-key, but catchy chorus, and instead of a second verse we get a full-on harmonica solo over the pre-chorus. But wait! There’s still a bridge coming! For a stripped-down group playing relatively straightforward rock music, Sex Hogs have a way of keeping one guessing.

Now, about that name. Look, it’s 2019, and naming bands is hard. All I’ll say is, now that our friend Matty P has retired the name Karaoke Hottiez, maybe Jon can now have a new favorite band name to hate. So thank you, Sex Hogs!

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Ball of Wax 57: 9/14 at the Blue Moon!

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Levi Fuller

Poster by Jon Rooney

Ball of Wax 57 Release Show
with Tekla Waterfield, The Foghorns, Cowboy Cold, and Colin Ernst
Saturday, September 14th
The Blue Moon Tavern, 712 NE 45th St.
$8 / Ball of Wax 57 CD included with entry

Ah yes, it’s almost the end of the summer, so you know it’s just about time for the summer volume of Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly! This one is chock-full of good music, and we’re excited to celebrate with old and new friends (including Cowboy Cold, all the way from Lubbock, Texas!) at the Blue Moon on Saturday the 14th. We’ll be rolling out the tracks here on the Blog of Wax starting today, so stay tuned!

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Album Review: Grumpy Bear’s Yield EP: Community Art from the Internet

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Bart Cameron

Grumpy Bear - Yield EP coverGrumpy Bear -Yield EP
(2019, self-released)

A little more than 15 years ago, I met someone who got something positive out of this thing called the Internet. His name is Þórir, and he’s from a small town in Northern Iceland called Husavik, and when I met him he was a teenager. He knew more about American music, or at least the music I was curious about, bands like Moldy Peaches, Silver Jews, The Brian Jonestown Massacre (which don’t seem to have anything in common, but I feel all are appealing for people used to being nowhere), than anyone I’d met, and he told me he discovered this stuff on the Internet. He traded ideas, learned about ways of expression, etc.

Such a promising future wasted. Not for Þórir. He’s still going. Check out thorirgeorg.bandcamp.com. His material is fantastic.

The Internet has of course been wasted, as has civilization and the notion of communication in general. Continue reading →

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Ball of Wax 56 Songs: Disinterested – “Sunlightwater”

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Lattney B. Jones

You know that dream you have every six years or so in which you’re standing at the edge of the world, surveying all that man hath wrought and not in the sense that we accomplished great things but in the sense that we ruined everything we had including each other, and you’re staring out across the slowly-changing dream topography and feeling alternating swells and ebbs of emotion as the greyscale and sunset hues coalesce into skyborn solids and rain back down in colors previously unseen and even though you have the vague sense that you are actually in a dream, you can’t help but think that the spider’s web of light before your eyes is too detailed to not be real? “Sunlightwater” by Disinterested is all of this.

Flowery prose? Sure, but stick with me here: each of us experiences music differently and each of us describes it differently. We use the tools we have—knowledge, understanding, vocabulary, emotions—to convey to others how we engage, absorb, and occupy the space of a song. With “Sunlightwater,” Matthew Brown gives us ample space to do all of this. In its tectonic shift from tone to chord, its sloped pasture of low end, and its occasional sprinkle of electronics, Brown provides us a lush river valley in which to lay, tiptoe, stare in awe, or run free. What happens next is of little significance just now, because we’re in the safest space available.

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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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