ivy room presentsTUESDAY FEBRUARY 13TH—DAVID WAX MUSEUEM& SPECIAL GUESTS—Doors 7:00pm / Show 8:00pm$17 Advance / $20 Door—IVY ROOM860 San Pablo Ave, Albany • 21+DAVID WAX MUSEUM(Website / Bandcamp / Facebook / Instagram)—In the presence of the strange digital drone of hospital machines, David Wax’s thoughts turned to13 songs and the changes they give voice to.After suddenly and inexplicably collapsing, Wax—half of David Wax Museum alongside wifeand bandmate Suz Slezak—was headed for a heart catheterization in his hometown of Columbia,Missouri, his doctors suspecting a heart attack...
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ivy room presentsTUESDAY FEBRUARY 13TH—DAVID WAX MUSEUEM& SPECIAL GUESTS—Doors 7:00pm / Show 8:00pm$17 Advance / $20 Door—IVY ROOM860 San Pablo Ave, Albany • 21+DAVID WAX MUSEUM(Website / Bandcamp / Facebook / Instagram)—In the presence of the strange digital drone of hospital machines, David Wax’s thoughts turned to13 songs and the changes they give voice to.After suddenly and inexplicably collapsing, Wax—half of David Wax Museum alongside wifeand bandmate Suz Slezak—was headed for a heart catheterization in his hometown of Columbia,Missouri, his doctors suspecting a heart attack. At a moment with more questions than answers,he hurriedly signed his name to a waiver—and was struck by a revelation.“Lying there on that stretcher the thing that kept running through my mind was: at least we madeYou Must Change Your Life,” Wax recalls. “Whatever else happened, I felt at peace because thisrecord exists.”The album, out May 5 on Nine Mile Records, is an openhearted manifesto – a collection thatembodies, then transcends bedrock elements of the band’s 15-year recording career.For Wax, music has guided every step he holds sacred; he’s followed its palpable power, abidingby its requisite unpredictability. After graduating at the top of his class at Harvard, he wanderedoff an academic path to southern Mexico, finding what he calls “a clear before/after moment inmy life.” There, he studied folk music “at the feet of the masters” and internalized structures andrhythms that continue to drive the band today. He and Slezak fell in love on their first nationaltour, setting in motion a future full of vivid waking dreams. Together (now with their twochildren in tow) they’ve logged 1,500 shows in every corner of the globe. From the back of apick-up truck in Nome, Alaska at a solstice parade, to a surreal moment in a tent filled with athousand Czechs hollering along to their iconic song “Harder Before It Gets Easier,” thesedreams continue to unfold for Wax and Slezak.Their latest effort encapsulates this wildly winding spirit and delivers the past-, present- andfuture-tense promises Wax and Slezak consider their shared purpose as musicians. To borrowlyrics from early highlight “Luanne,” the duo’s life—just like the album—is a shape-shifter,fate-twister, truth-sifter, dream-drifter, seam-ripper.In this way, the album is fit for a world tilted off its axis, colored by a collective resistance to oldnorms. Wax and Slezak give listeners permission to answer the whispers around and withinthem—Be patient / Don’t tell me that you’re unworthy—affirming and exhorting the pursuit ofnew ways of living.During this season of oddly borrowed time, Slezak crafted her NPR-praised solo debut, OurWings May Be Featherless, and initiated what she calls a “rebalancing” of her own creativity.The result—her power—is undiluted. On You Must Change Your Life, Slezak is a choir, aconscience, an instrumental trailblazer. And when she takes the lead on “Go Break SomeHearts,” she delivers a dazzling, dreamy innocence, evoking a kinder, gentler likeness of DavidLynch’s iconic Twin Peaks soundtrack.David Wax Museum blends the ancient and ever-relevant rhythms of traditional Mexican musicwith amber pop hues, their unabashed rock riffs emanating an air of AM radio circa 1975, alltethered together by seductive harmonies. It’s a seamless tapestry of boundless curiosity, anartful display of what Wax frames as “the lines blurring and dissolving between musical culturesand eras.” As it humbly beckons listeners to fulfill its title, You Must Change Your Life soundsout a thousand minor- and major-key ways one can do just that.Producer Dan Molad (of Lucius, Coco, JD McPherson) brings a particular brilliance to DavidWax Museum’s makeshift orchestra, an array of instruments bewildering on paper but perfectlyintuitive to the ears. The album features everything from electric guitar and bass clarinet duets tothe large-bodied Mexican huapanguera; tubular bells a la Pet Sounds to Jagger-esque heavybreathing; fiddles and marimbas adventuring through effects; and a saxophone “pitch-shiftedseveral octaves into a helium state of excitement,” as Wax puts it. He credits Molad’s instinctwith making the songs “3-D,” each tune inching toward pop glory.You Must Change Your Life refracts the light of a band whose vibrancy has been globallyrecognized by the highest tier of tastemakers. Since their early breakout as a buzz band at therevered Newport Folk Festival, Wax and Slezak have transmitted their kinetic energy inplatforms including CBS This Morning: Saturday, Tiny Desk Concert, and NPR’s WorldCafe. They have soundtracked love stories on and off screens, from the Netflix #1 show FireflyLane to the wedding of US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.Throughout You Must Change Your Life, Wax and Slezak convey how a single response to theheart’s cry—returning a stolen glance, ripping off a bandage, stepping out in faith—can makeour world over. Pain and peace attend every shift. After all, Changing your life ain’t likechanging clothes, Wax sings on “Your Heart’s a Pinata.” The band has held tightly to this truth,attending to Wax’s ongoing health journey and reshaping their career with intention. The albumboldly testifies: Your life will change with deliberation, but also in the mere act of living.The album is a celebration and an invocation, pure and infallible: It’s never too late. What areyou waiting for? You must change your life.
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