JOLTWAGON
Whyanosis
www.joltwagon.com
Admittedly, I’m one who tends to easily be swept into a river of nostalgia by a song. How pleased I was, then, when the first track on Whyanosis, Joltwagon’s sophomore album, dumped me into a veritable ocean of odd and wonderful memories from my early adulthood. There’s something amazing about getting tripped up into a state of wistfulness by a song that you’ve never heard before, and at least for me, this album is full of them. One criterion I’ve always used to determine whether something is “good art” or not (be it a song, film, book, poem or painting) is if it makes me feel something. The specific emotion is immaterial; rather the strength of the feeling is what is crucial. Whyanosis stirred up a strange mixture in me, as I recognized homage to so many of my favorites. An exceptional effort by this band, each track is miles apart from the one before it, but the album still holds together as a singular work. With shockingly transient musical jabs of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Dick Dale and Bela Fleck, the vocals impressed me more than anything else. Not because they were virtuosic (no offense), but because it should have been impossible sound simultaneously like Pink Floyd, Foo Fighters, The Grateful Dead, Jane’s Addiction and They Might Be Giants. Somehow, they managed to do it. I’d recommend this one to anybody looking for something comfortable, but laced with surprise.
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