Foxy Shazam

Foxy Shazam: “Red Cape Diver”

from Introducing (New Weathermen/Ferret)

good gaudy miss maudy //Out Jan. 23

(orig. pub. Jan 2008)                            

The sound of Foxy Shazam is the sound of one pin rolling, back and forth across a carpet full of crackers that won’t ever go smooth, no matter how fine their dust is ground. It’s the pressure in a knife sawing through a pan full of brownies harder than Astroturf (mysteriously so: all directions on the package followed to the letter, and that’s what we get for forsaking Great-Great-Grandma’s recipe). The sound and vision of Foxy Shazam is that of a family reunion, forced (as if) at gunpoint, nevertheless somehow busting loose in a good way (on shards of thin ice which will never melt permanently, of course). The sound of Foxy Shazam is that of close calls, across the rules and other speed bumps of music, of everything, at least by battle-rattling implication (which they don’t give much time for editorializing about, when their new album, Introducing, is playing, twitching like a background shouldn’t).

The sound of Foxy Shazam takes this reviewer back to and forward from the unexpectedly hammy, glammy frontmen of the slambands featured in Penelope Spheeris’s punk squatter saga, Suburbia: greasepaint as fuel and/or lubricant and/or salad dressing, for the festive-to-reckless rituals of the antsy-to-moshing audience. Also for those (in the Spheeris movie and in Foxy live shots on YouTube) sinners who are just grinning: you don’t have to take the sound just one way or another, which goes against punk and novelty strictures alike. The sound of Foxy Shazam is more careening carnival ride than the old punk der-der-der beat—but that rolling pin is rolling, like Sky White’s piano is rollicking, back and forth, through the ages of the living flame of punk, as “Yes! Yes! Yes!”,  for instance, spins and spews shards and shades of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, riding a streamlined Mars Volta (none of which allusions should be taken too literally, but  Foxy Shazam can often  be seen in the mental moonlight, shakin’ that family tree). The screaming of throatist Eric Nally (times Loren Turner’s guitar, Joe Holberstadt’s drums, Daisy’s bass) doesn’t get in the way of musical appreciation, or even Nally’s words. (Well, maybe on “Ghost Animals,” and anything may get a little blurry anywhere, but basically the studio tracks seem to know they need to provide more and some different detail than live offerings.)

“Red Cape Diver” starts with a “Spanish” piano intro, and is reportedly “about a bullfighter who is telling his family that he loves them before he goes off to work.” Not to judge him too harshly, ‘cause you couldn’t get this pixel-pusher fighting bulls, or Red Bull, for that matter, not even for the wife and kiddies, but…if you were fixing to go do that, wouldn’t you want to soothe them? Well, maybe the best way to do that is get ‘em swinging from the balconies, burning off that excess energy, and maybe that’s the best way to get yourself warmed up for the stage (all the world’s a stage!). And maybe every performer (everybody in the world, including the bullfighter’s wife and kiddies!) should reach way down sometimes (like every day, at least once a day), and come up with, “AHHHHHH! I DON’T WANNA DIE” as a chorus, and a motto, bouncing back and forth, from face to face, until the song is over. It might make everybody feel better. And then it would be something to look forward, to, like another day. The sound of Foxy Shazam is the sound of such thoughts, ground round (and round) as a head (and a spotlight). Their worth can be figured out (ditto whether it’s worth figuring out) by the pound (and the pound and the pound).  YEAH