Ball of Wax 40 Songs: Masonic Mouth Sounds – Leap Year Baby (Like *@#% Ain’t Happened)

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Levi Fuller

[Ball of Wax 40, as we’ve mentioned, is a little different. Given the unique nature of each of the bands and songs on this collection, we decided to eschew our usual track-review format for the blog in favor of letting each of the bands speak for themselves about the songs they wrote and recorded in a day. Masonic Mouth Sounds (Dekker Deen, Shannon Jae, Sam Russell, and Carlos Tulloss) were tasked with 2008. 3/4 of the band have shared with us their memories of the day’s events, along with their lyrics. Masonic Mouth Sounds will reunite to perform this song at the first Ball of Wax 40 release show on June 20th!]

Sam: This 24-hour thing was a blur of spitballed ideas and spiced rum. The meat of the day was spent with Carlos and Dekker working on the rhythm track while me and Shannon hammered out the lyrics with Dekker contributing on the bridge. Vocals and guitar were done late into the night then Carlos was left by his lonesome to add textures and mix the thing for another 12 hours. The whole process was both exhausting and an enormous amount of fun, the adult equivalent of being paired up with strange playmates on a foreign playground. Me and Shannon tried to go for a loose story and topical references relevant to the year in question though the results are probably more impressionistic than narrative. Shannon’s thoughts and feelings below pretty much sum up my own and I’m betting Carlos’ and Dekker’s too. Continue reading →

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Ball of Wax 40 Songs: Hixton Yor – Clinton/Knievel

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Levi Fuller

[Ball of Wax 40, as we’ve mentioned, is a little different. Given the unique nature of each of the bands and songs on this collection, we decided to eschew our usual track-review format for the blog in favor of letting each of the bands speak for themselves about the songs they wrote and recorded in a day. Hixton Yor, a band composed of Mike Bundy, Bart Cameron, Olie Eshleman, and Jon Rooney, tackled the tribulations of 2007. Jon and Bart share their reflections on the process.]

Jon: Once names were chosen, we immediately began working within certain constraints: the year 2007, our own abilities and Olie’s declaration that no guitars (not even bass guitar) be used in the session. Bart and I needed a moment to pull ourselves together facing a guitarless afternoon, then 2007 topics were bandied around. Some ideas we passed on (Romania joining the EU, the deaths of Boris Yeltsin and Anna Nicole Smith) while others stuck (the apex of Hilary Clinton’s campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, the death of Evel Knievel). The song came together pretty quickly, with Olie adding some sort of electric-drill-powered string instrument and Mike drumming on a small can amplified by a pickup and run through an extensive chain of effects pedals. We finished the song early in the evening on Saturday, likely less because of a rush of otherworldly inspiration and more because Bart, Mike and I have kids and kinda had to get home. So, one perspective of Hixton Yor is Olie producing a dad rock band. Sorry Olie.

Bart: I think we also finished quickly because of the way we worked—without ego. The song we wrote was about ego, Evil Knievel and his embodiment of all that is great in the prepubescent ego (as appropriated by Kanye Ego West later), and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Otherwise, I remember laughing a lot and watching how everyone was smiling the whole time. And I remember finding a large piece of salmon wrapped in newspaper on the back steps. When you find a large, old piece of fish wrapped neatly in newspaper, you remember something like that.

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Ball of Wax 40 Songs: Syncopateen – Massive Stardust

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Levi Fuller

[Ball of Wax 40, as we’ve mentioned, is a little different. Given the unique nature of each of the bands and songs on this collection, we decided to eschew our usual track-review format for the blog in favor of letting each of the bands speak for themselves about the songs they wrote and recorded in a day. The year 2006 was tackled by Syncopateen: Rob Anderson, Josh Engelhardt, Caroline Keys, and Michael Wohl .]

Dear Science,

I’m not sure what’s gone wrong but I feel we’re growing farther apart. While I can be quite distant at times I’ve always felt we had a bond that held us together. Now it seems like you have less time and interest in me.

You’ve been spending time with some who are close to me and I see their shadows passing over me. Is there someone else?

If you need time, I have it; we’ve been together for eons. If you need some time I can move farther away for quite awhile but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to break free of our bond.

-Pluto

Pluto,

While I admit there is an undeniable attraction between us, I feel you’ve grown cold and distant. After seeing so many around you I realize I’ve only been seeing a shadow of you for all these years. Its really not you, you’ve been the same throughout our relationship, coming and going as you please, showing me only one side of yourself, cold, sometimes close, sometimes so far away. I don’t want to say “It’s not you it’s me,” but its really true. You’re the same, I’ve changed the way I look at you.

I hope we can still be friends.

-Astronomers

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Ball of Wax 40 Songs: I Am the Deciders – Brangelina Lives Matter

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Levi Fuller

[Ball of Wax 40, as we’ve mentioned, is a little different. Given the unique nature of each of the bands and songs on this collection, we decided to eschew our usual track-review format for the blog in favor of letting each of the bands speak for themselves about the songs they wrote and recorded in a day. BoW 40 starts in 2005 with Brangelina Lives Matter: Meghan Kessinger, Holly Small, Kevin Suggs, and Jonathan Wooster.]

Things that happened in 2005:

  • Hurricane Katrina
  • Earthquakes in Iran (500 dead) and Japan (many injured)
  • 4 terrorist attacks in London (killing 52, 700 injured)
  • Seahawks lose the Super Bowl
  • Mumbai, India receives 39.17 inches of rain within 24 hours, bringing the city to a halt for over 2 days
  • Bridge stampede in Baghdad kills several hundred civilians
  • Brad Pitt leaves Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie

So, 2005 was mostly a terrible year. It was full of actual horrible things that happened (on a personal level and a global level) and then also stupid pop cultural things that happened (that people may have paid more attention to). We decided to write a song that reflected that.

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10 years, 40 musicians, One CD: Ball of Wax Turns Ten!

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Levi Fuller
Harry-candy-selection

Ball of Wax 40 Harry Candy selection panorama by Kirsten Eklund

Ball of Wax Volume 40/10th anniversary celebration weekend:

Saturday, June 20, Conor Byrne Pub
5140 Ballard Ave NW, Seattle
The Great Um, Sam Russell and the Screen Soul Explosion, Eggshells, Virgin of the Birds, Screens, and special guests
Doors 9pm | Show 9:30pm | $8 | 21+

Sunday, June 21, Ballard Homestead
6541 Jones Ave NW, Seattle
The Foghorns, GreenhornBluehorn, Colin J Nelson, Shannon Jae, and special guests
Doors 1:30pm  |  Show 2-4:30pm | $7 Advance / $10 Door | all ages
Kids 12 and under  free. Concert indoors + lawn games out in the side yard. Picnics welcome.

Mike Bundy bangs on a can or something.

Mike Bundy bangs on a can or something. Photo by Jon Rooney.

Can you believe Ball of Wax is almost 10 years old? I sure can’t. I wanted to mark volume 40, and our tenth anniversary, with something special, so I hand-picked 40 BoW alumni ranging from volume 1 to volume 39* to take part in a one-day music-making experiment. In the largest iteration yet of the recording game Harry Candy (main/only rule: write and record a piece of music in 24 hours – see also Ball of Wax 11), we all met in the morning on April 4th, randomly divided into ten bands, and went off to ten separate locations to each write and record a new song. Each band was randomly assigned a year from 2005 to 2014 to serve as the inspiration for their song, providing both a conceptual framework and a track sequence for the collection. Continue reading →

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This Murder Won’t Hurt You, Baby – Sam Russell on the Foghorns

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Levi Fuller

[The Foghorns‘ new album The Sun’s Gotta Shine comes out today. Our friend Sam Russell has a few things to say about it. -ed]

The sun shines in Kenosha. Photo by Eric Allix Rogers

The sun shines in Kenosha. Photo by Eric Allix Rogers

I tend to assume that wherever a person was born, wherever they are from, they have an attachment, an inseparable bond with that place. That they think of that place as being unique and the reasons for it being unique they can never quite fully convey to an outside party, and only when one crosses paths with another from this same place can this recognition can be shared. I assume the feeling of uniqueness and ownership for one’s homeland is a universal glue and that though we are not all from the same place then at least we all have a place where we are from.

However, the older I get and the more people I meet, I realize this is not always so. For starters, not every person was born and raised in one place, a single location where all thoughts, daydreams, and fantasies had as a child and adolescent were once contained; a place where when one returns to, the ghosts of these former or sometimes still relevant yearnings are seen in the remaining people and locations that remain and remind.

But there’s something about the time and place where I was born, in Kenosha, WI in the 1980s and 1990s, and being raised by baby boomer parents who experienced the broad split and drastic social and cultural change between the 1950s and 1960s that made a child like me both long for a past never experienced and be instantly nostalgic for the time they were being raised in. And furthermore be raised to believe that the time you live in can change at a moment’s notice, or even that moment might be gone even before it passes. Continue reading →

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Behold the Battles, Behold Giantess

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Jon Rooney

Arguably the first shot fired in the great Canadian indie renaissance of this young century was “Letter from an Occupant.” This shimmering, frenetic pop nugget, initially attributed to the New Pornographers and Neko, appeared on a benefit compilation CD for local charity A Loving Spoonful titled Vancouver Special way back in April 2000. The excitement around “Letter from an Occupant” begot Mass Romantic, a big indie hit in the United States at least, which begot all sorts of excellence from the likes of Neko Case, Destroyer, Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes, A.C. Newman, Black Mountain and, one might argue, even Broken Social Scene, the Unicorns, and Arcade Fire. Tucked into the track list of Vancouver Special is a song called “Lycanthropy” by a band called the Battles. “Lycanthropy” didn’t take the pre-blog indie world by storm like “Letter from an Occupant” did, but it should have. It’s fucking great.

Continue reading →

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The Edinburgh Waxers: Storm the Palace

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Bart Cameron

stormthepalaceI’m still reeling from the experience of watching 40 random musicians from Seattle come together in draw-from-a-hat collections to become bands and produce music. Levi Fuller demonstrated, in 24 hours, that the only thing keeping Seattle from being a massive artist colony is the invitation. [Yes, this is how we spent our weekend. Stay tuned for Ball of Wax 40 later this spring to hear the results. -ed]

The model I hope we take after is Edinburgh, home of The Fringe Festival, and home to the most collaborative musicians I’ve met. Our own Jon Rooney has become, I think, an honorary member of the Edinburgh set. So much so that he brings back suggested artists on each of his seemingly barnstorming tours.

This is how I came to hear Storm the Palace, a nuanced, pop-inflected five-piece (and often more, see the collaboration idea noted above). The vibe of Storm the Palace is not far from Jon’s Virgin of the Birds—it is music you don’t have to check our brain at the door for. The keyboard work is also vaguely reminiscent of VotB (keyboardist Reuben Taylor played on an in-studio with Virgin of the Birds during the last mini-tour). Continue reading →

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Album Review: Carlos Forster – Disasters

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Jon Rooney

disasters-carlos-forsterCarlos Forster – Disasters
(2015, Acuarela Discos)

Heartbreaking songwriter Carlos Forster is back with his second solo outing, Disasters, on super rad Spanish label Acuarela Discos. Like his first solo release (Forster once led the fabulous Bay Area band For Stars) Family Trees, Disasters is melancholy, brooding, and beautiful. What’s new with Disasters is an expansive aural palate filled with layers of synth patches, ambient noises, and distant voices. Disasters is experimental and minimalist in arrangement, taking on a quasi-New Age vibe at times (though more Laraaji than Michael Manring) while remaining a song-based pop record. Songs like “Child on a Train” and “Outdoor Miner” (a Wire cover) rely heavily on seemingly archaic digital synth textures in a way that surprisingly complements Forster’s downcast lullabies. “Tim,” about the late American Music Club drummer and owner of San Francisco’s Closer Studios (where my old band once recorded – just a wonderful space) is a vast, moving tone poem. The musical highlight of Disasters may be the opener, “You’ll Survive,” carried by Forster’s heart-wrenching, irresistible melody and taken home by a gorgeous trumpet solo. Just a stunning track:

Continue reading →

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Ball of Wax 39 Songs: small plans – My Life Won’t Live Me

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Levi Fuller

small plans are new to the Ball of Wax fold, but half of their members are old pals. The double-Josh rhythm section has also performed as a fearsome duo under the moniker Wyoming Young and Strong, whom you might have heard way back on Ball of Wax 21. For this project, the Joshes haven’t turned down their volume, but have adopted a somewhat poppier approach by teaming up with guitar players and singers Meghan (formerly of Racetrack) and Keenan (formerly of Patience Please). The result is a highly listenable hybrid of jangly pop-punk and sludgily bludgeoning noise-punk. This being the last song on Ball of Wax 39, it will not leave your head for days. I really wish small plans were playing the BoW 39 show tomorrow, but we were afraid they might be too loud for Conor Byrne. Make sure to catch them at your earliest opportunity, and don’t let those sweet vocal hooks fool you – bring your earplugs!

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