La Dandy Boy Records di Oakland è diventata una di quelle etichette di cui puoi fidarti praticamente a occhi chiusi. Uscita dopo uscita, si è guadagnata una reputazione di qualità e dedizione assolute, grazie soprattutto alla passione del suo fondatore Bobby Martinez e al suo instancabile supporto alla scena underground della Bay Area. Quando ti arriva una sua email che ti consiglia un disco, sai che praticamente sempre colpirà nel segno. La sorpresa più recente è stata Waxworld, il debutto solista di Joel Cusumano. Un "debutto" per modo di dire, dato che - come leggerete qui sotto - il musicista ha una lunga e variegata carriera alle spalle. Questo nuovo lavoro è un compendio di jangle pop robusto e coinvolgente, che di certo si ispira a nomi classici come R.E.M. o Lemonheads, tanto per citarne due facili, ma che sa poi trovare strade nuove e personali, raccontando storie con uno stile a volte sorprendente. Sono stato subito molto incuriosito da queste canzoni e volevo saperne di più, così ho mandato allo stesso Joel qualche domanda e, tra disquisizioni sui generi musicali e citazioni del Nuovo Testamento, decisamente sono stato accontentato!
The press release accompanying this album describes you as "a staple in the Bay Area underground scene," and that seems fitting, considering the list of bands you've been in and your many musical endeavors. How did your career begin?
Well I feel a little funny because—in the interest of full disclosure—I wrote that press release! But I’d like to believe it’s true. Since I moved to the Bay Area in 2009, I’ve played in a ton of bands such as R.E. Seraphin, Cocktails, Body Double, Sob Stories, Talkies, and Razz, to name just a few! If you want to get a taste of my best recorded work, I’d suggest R.E. Seraphin’s Fool’s Mate, Body Double’s Voice 2 Skull EP, Sob Stories’ Fair Shakes, and Cocktails’ Catastrophic Entertainment.
I got my first guitar on my 15th birthday. Honestly, part of the reason why I wanted a guitar was that I liked the look of my favorite guitarists such as George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, and, yes, ugh, Eric Clapton (my tastes have changed since then). I was an extremely shy, insecure kid, but a guitar promised to turn me into something else. I got into punk and new wave and indie the year after that. So throughout high school I spent a lot of time in my room studying Jimmy Page and Mick Jones (The Clash, not Foreigner!) leads and Beatles and Elvis Costello chord progressions.
I joined my first band in college, we were a cover band, and our covers were mostly power pop such as Cheap Trick, Big Star, Nick Lowe, 20/20, The Boys, etc. as well as a few that could be considered strictly punk. We did a great cover of Richard Hell’s Love Comes in Spurts, and I did a passable version of Bob Quine’s solo!
After college, I struggled to find stability and direction in all aspects of my life, but in my own head I was a genius singer/songwriter. The problem was that my songwriting at that point was fucking awful! Really awful! The best thing I did at that time was to put my songwriting career on hold and start playing in other people’s bands. The humility and discipline of simply showing up and being a useful part of building someone else’s vision helped me realize how I could realistically build my own. My collaborations with Ray Seraphin, with whom I’ve played in Talkies, R.E. Seraphin, and now on Waxworld, really helped me grow as a musician, as did my work with the bands Cocktails, Razz, and Body Double, all of which I primarily played lead guitar for, though I wrote songs here and there.
I got my first guitar on my 15th birthday. Honestly, part of the reason why I wanted a guitar was that I liked the look of my favorite guitarists such as George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, and, yes, ugh, Eric Clapton (my tastes have changed since then). I was an extremely shy, insecure kid, but a guitar promised to turn me into something else. I got into punk and new wave and indie the year after that. So throughout high school I spent a lot of time in my room studying Jimmy Page and Mick Jones (The Clash, not Foreigner!) leads and Beatles and Elvis Costello chord progressions.
I joined my first band in college, we were a cover band, and our covers were mostly power pop such as Cheap Trick, Big Star, Nick Lowe, 20/20, The Boys, etc. as well as a few that could be considered strictly punk. We did a great cover of Richard Hell’s Love Comes in Spurts, and I did a passable version of Bob Quine’s solo!
After college, I struggled to find stability and direction in all aspects of my life, but in my own head I was a genius singer/songwriter. The problem was that my songwriting at that point was fucking awful! Really awful! The best thing I did at that time was to put my songwriting career on hold and start playing in other people’s bands. The humility and discipline of simply showing up and being a useful part of building someone else’s vision helped me realize how I could realistically build my own. My collaborations with Ray Seraphin, with whom I’ve played in Talkies, R.E. Seraphin, and now on Waxworld, really helped me grow as a musician, as did my work with the bands Cocktails, Razz, and Body Double, all of which I primarily played lead guitar for, though I wrote songs here and there.
My musical diet has grown so much since my late teens/early 20s. A random sampling of my musical diet while making Waxworld would be King Crimson, Yes, Prefab Sprout, Franco Battiato, Milton Nascimento, Astor Piazzola… does any of that show up in Waxworld? I don’t know! But I do think that part of my musical personality is shaped by my hungry and constantly evolving tastes. And life experience has changed me. It’s tough out there! I’ve lived through a lot of disappointment, pain, cruelty, loss, frustration, mental health issues—especially in the last 5 years while I was writing the bulk of Waxworld. I’m also a continuous reader, and I’m always learning new things. I don’t know if I could write a song worth listening to without my experiences and curiosity and values and shifting views of the world. I don’t understand how people can be great songwriters in their late teens or early 20s. They haven’t lived life yet. What do they have to say? But of course, some people really are that good!
I had initially started playing some of the songs (such as Caesar, Another Time, Another Place, Oh Zoë) around 2023 in my previous band Sob Stories. We even started to record some of those songs (Oh Zoë is the only song that made it on Waxworld from that session). However in 2024 Sob Stories dissolved, and Bobby Martinez (Dandy Boy Records owner) suggested I turn these songs into a solo album. It’s silly that it hadn’t occurred to me. Sob Stories was essentially a solo project already. I guess I had a little fear that my name wasn’t marketable enough—Italian surnames get butchered in English-speaking countries (no joke, I’ve had people look me in the eyes and ask if Cusumano is Japanese!)—but it is unique, and I’m proud of my name. It’s who I am!
I do think the writing and arrangements are different from previous projects, but more in the sense of an evolution, not a complete break. On Waxworld, I’m incorporating more literary references, I’m expanding my palate from strictly power pop, I’m playing less solos, I’m thinking more thematically when writing and choosing material. And though the songs are personal in the sense that they mostly all have a first-person perspective, there are far less songs about breakups or romantic anxieties. For years I seemed to only be able to write very direct songs about relationships, a type of writing that bores me now! Waxworld has songs about theology (The Sheep and the Goats), prophecy (Through a Darkened Glass), society (Push Push). Even songs that are informed by a breakup, such as Death-Wax Girl and Two Arrows, are highly aestheticized. And other songs that have moments that touch on love and relationships, such as Another Time, Another Place or No Hello, are fractured and have different concerns and perspectives than lamenting over heartbreak.
Although I have a history playing in power pop bands (not all my bands have been power pop though, I’ve played post-punk and shoegaze and industrial music too!), and I truly love so many power pop bands, I have mixed feelings about Waxworld being associated with power pop. It’s limiting. In its most negative sense, power pop is associated with insular, male-centric music nerds and snobs. It’s a genre that is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be a bit surface and superficial. I really sound like I’m beating up on power pop here, I’m not, it’s just that as an artist I’d prefer not to be straitjacketed by preconceived notions about my music. Power pop comes with a lot of baggage.
That said, I accept the power pop label as a marketing term. It’s a cheap way to communicate something to an audience that I know will like my stuff. Some of the songs on Waxworld are power pop, absolutely. I am always attracted to music that is immediate and powerful, which is what power pop does best. But it wasn’t my intention with Waxworld to make a power pop album, nor do I think most of the songs on it are power pop. Indie rock, baroque pop, alternative rock, jangle pop—these are all labels I think fit certain songs on Waxworld just as well as power pop. But if you’re reading this and you think my music is power pop, then great! I’m not a huge fan of labels in general, so I think if my music was labeled X or Y or Z genre, I’d react negatively to that as well.
I like your point about mixing classic references with my own personal energy, which is exactly how I conceive of my writing. I’m not reinventing the wheel with my music. I’m drawing on a conventional canon of punk, alternative, and indie in Waxworld, but I hope to always suffuse the music with my personality and eccentric perspective. With regards to classic or retro music, there’s definitely a current trend of bands who excel at nailing a specific retro style, or even sounding exactly like a specific retro band. That certainly takes a lot of talent and careful study! But I don’t hear these bands’ own personalities in their songs. There’s no take on the music that moves me to do anything other than want to listen to the original bands that they’re imitating. I’m not going to name names because I’d get in trouble! And I have great respect for anyone making any kind of music; it is not easy. I just want to point out that simply making retro music is not my goal. I don’t think you hear a specific period or style or classic band being reproduced in Waxworld, but, like you said, a plurality of references that point towards my own personality.
Waxworld is not a concept album, there is no narrative, but there is absolutely a loose theme tying it together, and the title alludes to that. The unifying theme of the album is change, flux, the way life and people and all things you assume are dependable can actually be deceptive and unpredictable, and they will ultimately disintegrate. How life becomes tragic and farcical when we think we can predict or control its circumstances. Do all of these songs contain these themes? I don’t know, probably not. It was a post-hoc application. But ask me about any specific song and I’ll tell you why the theme DOES work for it!
Where the wax comes in: I had an ex who wrote a brilliant research paper about the use of wax in depictions of death and mortality. In the paper she discusses everything from Egyptian magic dolls to Roman funerary effigies to Baroque-era wax anatomical models. One of her observations—that wax realistically serves as a substitute for skin, tissue, and organs—fascinated me, and I decided wax would make a great unifying image for the album and its themes of change, flux, and impermanence. The word Waxworld popped into my head at some point. If you search Google for Clemente Susini’s La Venerina, (The Anatomical Venus in English), you can see an example of what I’m drawing on. It’s a sculpture that looks human, it looks organic, but it is a deception—it’s not “real”, it’s not human, it is wax; it can be molded, melted, shaped, transmuted. I only explicitly state these ideas in the song Death-Wax Girl, which was one of the last songs written for the album, after I’d come up with the title.
In the last decade or so I’ve done a lot of reading and traveling. I’ve re-ignited my childhood interest in history, especially the ancient and medieval world. I lived in Pozzuoli (next door to the ruins of Cuma) as a child in the early ‘90s, and existing in the shadow of that living history affected me. I’ve recently read stuff such as Plato’s dialogues, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, histories of the New Testament and Byzantium and Sicily and the Caliphates etc. etc. I’ve even read most of the Bible! These subjects have been on my mind. The idea of contrasting immediate, bouncy pop music with unlikely images of antiquity appeals to me. I’ve always enjoyed unexpected, dissonant textures in otherwise straightforward pop music. And it’s part of what I said about making music that combines convention with the artist’s personality. I also believe pop music is in desperate need of exciting images. Too many contemporary lyrics describe a world that is dreadfully ordinary and mundane. If I want to see artificial mundanity I can scroll Instagram or TikTok!
I’m happy you mention prophecy. If you’re like me and were raised an obedient Catholic boy, maybe you recognize that Through a Darkened Glass (a song that I consider very key to the album thematically) refers to 1 Corinthians 13, a chapter that makes its appearance several times on the album. It’s a striking passage in which the apostle Paul discusses the limits of human prophecy, which will be rendered useless after the arrival of the Kingdom of God.
Through a Darkened Glass also contains a reference to the (alleged) final prophecy of the Sybil of Delphi, given to the Emperor Julian the Apostate in reference to the triumph of Christianity over Greco-Roman paganism. I live in Silicon Valley. The tech oligarchy is currently obsessed with a belief that AI will predict our future and re-order society. I find that idea just as silly as the ancients believing in the sybil’s oracles. Actually, I find the idea of relying on AI as anything other than an advanced filing system to be stupider than seeking guidance from the sybil. The sybils had a respect for history and a humility for humanity’s place in the world vis-à-vis the gods. The sybil sat above a stream of living water which spoke to her. AI is fed by draining the equivalent of lakes of water. For what? To make the world uglier and stupider. The average tech CEO believes they have superseded history. I believe one day history will laugh at the Sam Altmans and Elon Musks of the world the way the Greeks laughed at King Croesus marching to war against Persia. Of course in Waxworld’s final song, Forming, I offer a prophecy of my own: Nothing can be preserved.
I hope anyone reading this far will understand that despite my ranting here, Waxworld isn’t a boring classics lesson! I swear it’s just a catchy rock album!
I’m really glad you like that one! It’s a love song above all. I wrote it about my ex, the one who introduced me to the ideas about wax, with whom I was desperately in love while writing the back half of this album. But it’s not really “about” her—”she” doesn’t appear in the song, not really. What appears is the way she made me feel. I think that’s clear in the chorus, which, as you’ve indicated, is really about me, my feelings—not her. I guess the idea is that I felt so safe and excited and inspired—and perhaps complacent or medicated—in the presence of this person that I considered giving up my passions and ambitions simply to exist in her presence. It’s a bit of a fantasy. But honestly I didn’t really think that deeply about it when I wrote it. I just thought it was a funny and romantic thing to say. And I did feel transformed by this person. She came into my life after a long period of darkness. And maybe it’s silly, but the opening lyric about light hitting the window felt very literal. I had in mind the tearing of the veil in Matthew 27:51. Really grandiose stuff. But I was in love! I hope that if she’s heard the song she likes it, but my suspicion is that she’s either annoyed or completely indifferent.
To a degree I do feel disillusioned about music. I certainly don’t hold the wide-open ambitions I did when I was younger that I might become famous or rich doing this. I used to think music would “save” me, that it could truly fix insecurities deep within me dating back to childhood. I imbued it with a magical power. That was a fantasy; it was never going to do that. That’s not music’s fault though. I also find the music industry to be infested on all levels with toxic and childish people—not exclusively of course; my friends and collaborators are obviously an exception! The Bay Area scene is thankfully filled with incredibly talented and genuine and supportive folks.
Ha! I hope the estate of Mr. Gassman doesn’t come after me for that sample that you’ve correctly identified! Why is it there? I hate to give a disappointing answer, but I guess mostly because I think it sounded cool. The Sheep and the Goats is a playful song about the unresolvable idea that God is at once a benevolent being while also perfectly happy with human suffering. And the related idea that there are arbitrary, revealed rules that one must follow to sustain God’s favor. I guess there’s some sort of half-baked connection between those ideas and The Divine Comedy, which is Dante’s extended explanation of God’s perfect justice. The sample is specifically Gassman reading from Canto 9, which discusses the heretics, who will be sealed in burning tombs for all of eternity on judgement day—a particularly horrifying passage that scarred me when I first read The Inferno in high school! Dante’s heretics are also damned with the ability to see the future but not the present, which relates to the album’s themes of prophecy.
Anyways, I hope anyone reading this will listen to the song and realize that none of this really matters to its enjoyment; it’s just a fun little guitar pop song in which I try to channel Guided by Voices and The Byrds!
Anyways, I hope anyone reading this will listen to the song and realize that none of this really matters to its enjoyment; it’s just a fun little guitar pop song in which I try to channel Guided by Voices and The Byrds!
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