Joel Cusumano Releases "Mary Katharine" Video from Upcoming "WAXWORLD" LP
Dandy Boy Records recently announced the fiery debut power pop LP from a Bay Area underground mainstay, Joel Cusumano. "WAXWORLD" comes out on October 24th, and the label released a video today for "Mary Katharine"(see Raven Sings The Blues premiere).....
Though you, dear reader, may not know it, Joel Cusumano has played a huge role in the Bay Area underground scene for years—as songwriter and/or lead guitarist in a wide-ranging lineup of bands such as Sob Stories, R.E. Seraphin, and Body Double.
Cusumano began writing the music that would become his first solo album, WAXWORLD, after a stint in a mental hospital treating his debilitating OCD: “It was bleak. For a year I could barely function, barely leave the house. After [the hospital] I recovered pretty rapidly. But instead of feeling relief, there was dread, like, ‘Well, what now’? You spend over a year falling off the deep end and you’re a different person when you hit the ground … I needed to write differently than I had before. I was looking around the world and not recognizing what I saw. The songs had to reflect that alienation. I was done with the ‘angry young man’ jilted lover stuff I’d been doing in Sob Stories. I was bored with that kind of boilerplate rock’n’roll topography.” A painful breakup at the end of writing process further sharpened Cusumano’s eye towards material reflecting his growing unease in a world in unrelenting flux.
But despite weighty origins, WAXWORLD’s sound is, like all of Cusumano’s work, instantly fun, catchy, and accessible, if a little moody. WAXWORLD effortlessly weaves between guitar pop styles from bubblegum (“Push Push”) and post-punk (“Death-Wax Girl”), to straight power pop (“Another Time, Another Place”) and slacker rock (“Caesar”), while always retaining immediacy and cohesiveness. Cusumano’s vocals straddle a narrow isthmus between apathy and earnestness.
Lyrically WAXWORLD moves beyond the skinny tie romanticism of Cusumano’s previous work. “Caesar”, “Two Arrows”, and “Death-Wax Girl” are mini guitar pop tragedies. “Push Push” is a venomous anthem condemning a morality free culture. “Maybe in a Different World” is based on a 2nd-century gnostic poem. “Forming” is told from the point-of-view of a caged lunatic prophesying the end of the world. Throughout, there’s a push-pull between highbrow and lowbrow imagery; classical and biblical allusions rest beside references to Smashing Pumpkins lyrics and the ‘80s horror-comedy Terrorvision. Throughout, Cusumano performs with a witty, self-aware unease, best summed up in the last verse of one of the album’s highlights, “Another Time, Another Place”: “Out at a party / under the neon glare / Is this supposed to be fun? / Am I supposed to care?”
When choosing WAXWORLD’s title and unifying metaphor, Cusumano had in mind the gruesome wax anatomical models created by 17th- and 18th-century Italian sculptors such as Ercole Lelli and Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (who’s referenced in “Death-Wax Girl”): “Wax is a creative substance that can be both lifelike and deceptive—easily transformed. This tension of its properties makes it a fitting image for some of the themes I was exploring in the songs: appearance and deception, prophecy and hubris, earnestness and dissembling, creation and destruction.”
RiYL: Chime School, Diners, Teenage Fanclub, Elvis Costello, Young Guv, Pavement
