Joel Cusumano Releases New 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 the track "Two Arrows", now they've released the new song and video for (see Magenet Magazine premiere).....
Fiery debut power pop LP from a Bay Area underground mainstay!
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
