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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Ball of Wax 39 Songs: Ainara LeGardon – Every Minute

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Levi Fuller

My god, has it really been four years since we last heard from Ainara LeGardon? How the years fly. It was almost exactly that long ago that she released We Once Wished, the blistering LP I wrote a bit about here. I included the title track from that album on Ball of Wax 23; apparently I have thing for title tracks when it comes to Ainara, as “Every Minute” is the song I knew I had to have for Ball of Wax 39 upon hearing her new album Every Minute. The song and album continue her trajectory of fearless, weighty rock, with Ainara wielding her guitar and voice as finely hewn weapons, backed up by the muscular rhythm section of Héctor Bardisa and Rubén Martínez. The tension created in “Every Minute” by the relentless three-against-four rhythm and the elegant bludgeoning delivered by this fearsome threesome is almost too much to bear. I don’t really believe in bucket lists, but I sincerely hope Ainara and her band come to Seattle or I make it to Basque Country to see them before I die.

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Ball of Wax 39 Songs: Goodies – Others

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Levi Fuller

I really should have an “Alex Drum” tag on this blog by now. [OK, now I do, but I don’t know when I’ll get to retroactively tagging the other relevant posts.] It would at least be a start in trying to keep track of this mercurial Brooklynian and his many projects, from Whales/The Magic of Multiples to FUNSHIP, Shiv Hurrah, and, now, Goodies (an apt band name from a guy who’s delivered so many musical goodies to us over the years).

Unlike some of the bedroom (or attic, as the case may be) four-track pop we’ve heard from Whales etc. over the years, Goodies has the sound of a collaborative band project, the product of a bunch of people playing together in a room, bouncing parts off each other, vamping, seeing where the music takes them. Something about “Others” evokes a certain slice of ’90s or early ’00s indie rock to me. I can’t put a finger on the band or songs I might be thinking of, but I feel like there were a number of instrumentally-oriented groups that wrote great vocal parts but paid at least as much attention to creating a compelling musical bed, and integrating the whole thing together so no one instrument or voice was the lead. I thjink the world could use more of this approach, so I’m glad to hear Goodies is carrying it forward. It’s just bass, drums, two guitars, and two voices – a couple simple riffs, a pulsing beat, and some hushed words – but it makes for some lovely listening.

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Ball of Wax 39 Songs: Lasers Lasers Birmingham – Warning

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Jon Rooney

Writing short song reviews that appear on Ball of Wax volumes for Ye Olde Blog of Wax is different from other music writing I’ve done in the past, most notably because I don’t get a press email or a one sheet to frame up my little reviews – Levi just sends me songs once he’s assembled each volume. Had I received something of the like for “Warning,” it would have hopefully given me some insight into the band’s unusual name: Lasers Lasers Birmingham. My context clues initially tell me it’s some sort of Black Sabbath tribute band, as “Warning” is also the name of a Black Sabbath song (which is itself a cover of a song originally by The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation – thanks internet!), Sabbath is from Birmingham, England and Lasers Lasers are rad in a Heavy Metal kind of way. But, alas, my context clues led me astray. Lasers Lasers Birmingham appear to be the musical moniker of a country psych artist from Los Angeles. “Warning” is a catchy, well-put together song that reminds me of a cross between the spacey canyon jams of Beachwood Sparks and the bouncy pop of, say, Bishop Allen. Lasers Lasers Birmingham are a welcome new addition to the Ball of Wax consortium, I’ll be on the lookout for more of their work.

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Ball of Wax 39 Songs: Webelos – Living in Another City

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Jon Rooney

Seattle veterans Webelos bring a nice slice of hazy indie pop to Ball of Wax 39 with “Living in Another City.” Layering strings and electric piano over straightforward pop instrumentation, Webelos employ boy/girl vocals for an overall feel of longing and wistfulness. This is tried and true rainy-day bedroom pop done very nicely, distant and intimate at the same time. If you need a reminder of how much you love dreamy pop, try on “Living in Another City” for size.

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