Words by Jason Lee
Season change. Summer turns to fall. Fall turns to winter. Winter skips over spring and goes straight to summer thanks to global warming. You get the idea.
But despite the elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, there’s still something poignant about the seasons changing, especially when summer turns to fall and yeah yeah we know summer doesn’t “officially” turn to fall for a few more weeks but still for all intents and purposes it’s over cuz whatever you planned to do this summer and didn’t, well, it’s too late now to take a summer vacation or to have a summer fling innit so all you can do now is look back regretfully on what you didn’t do or wistfully on what you did…
..which is f*cking catnip for musicians of course cuz musicians love emotional poignancy ergo the vast number of musical works about seasons and seasons changing (see also: the passage of time and mortality) going all the way back to Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons which had Baroque babes throwing their bloomers on stage at the ginger-maned-priest-turned-proto-rock-star violinist (bras were yet to be invented) which is even more impressive given that Four Seasons was essentially the first concept album ever and you just know nobody ever threw their bloomers at Geddy Lee when Rush played 2112 in its entirety on stage…
…which is why you’re better off writing concept albums about climate change (the natural kind) than Ayn Rand, which works just as well in the three-minute pop format too like with Elvis’s “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears” from 1960’s Flaming Star (Elvis’s last attempt to be taken seriously as an actor before succumbing to a decade-long string of cinematic atrocities featuring songs like “There’s No Room To Rumba In A Sports Car”) a song poignant enough to be covered by Julee Cruise a few decades later on the soundtrack of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World in fittingly wistful, ethereal fashion for a song about trading a few stolen “happy hours” one summer for subsequent “lonely years” and being left “to spend my lonely nights / with dreams of yesterday” whilst “recall[ing] the summer sun / through all the winter rain”…
…and with all of the above as prologue we bet you’re expecting us to tell you about a new song that’s about the changing of the seasons which sorry to disappoint but Basalt Jar’s “Wild Wins” isn’t explicitly about any such thing but what it is all about is being a wistful, ethereal meditation on the subject of entering a new phase and moving from one emotional state of being to another and what’s more Julie Rozansky a.k.a. Basalt Jar also plays bass in a David Lynch Extended Cinematic Universe cover band called Fuck You, Tammy! previously covered in the Deli tho’ regrettably their stunning live video for “Sycamore Trees” appears to have been taken down by Paramount Global…
…a band which features more than a few songs with vocals originally performed by Julee Cruise (RIP) which is the vibe we’re getting from “Wild Wins” too (to wit: Julie R. played the occasional gig with a Rush cover band in year past) tho’ Basalt Jar’s self-description as being like “Mazzy Star and Garbage drink[ing] wine and tell[ing] each other secrets” also tracks but between the deliberately-paced two-chord vamp and airy vocals and the swaying-in-place-like-you’re-Audrey-Horne overall vibes with a dramatic crescendo at the end complete with slow-motion wailing guitar and angelic harmonies we’d definitely not be surprised to see Basalt Jar on stage at the Bang Bang Bar in the next season of Twin Peaks…
It’s dangerous to look at you
But I can’t turn away
Catch my breath
Blink and you’re gone
You were never there all along
…and with lyrics like these “Wild Wins” certainly lends itself to soundtracking a fleeting summer fling whose memory lingers achingly into the fall and winter or maybe addresses summer’s passing itself except that instead of being fixated exclusive on the past Basalt’s Jar’s song faces forward as well, throwing down the gauntlet with lines like “try to tame this heart of mine / but her wild wins every time” cuz there’s lots of things to love about fall and winter as well and so we’d heartily recommend it for those prone to being sad from Seasonal Affective Disorder…
…and would also recommend to fans of bands (past and present) like Ilithios, Scam Avenue, Tree River, and The Art of Shooting to which Julie also contributes with Basalt Jar being the first project we’re aware of where she’s taken on sole songwriting and lead vocal duties with the two songs out currently under the Basalt Jar moniker having gestated over the course of years in the midst of the bassist-singer-songwriter’s otherwise busy schedule which is probably why they both hit so hard (basalt literally means “very hard stone,” formed from cooled lava over the centuries) and we can only but hope there’s more to come in the coming seasons…
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Julie’s notes on “Wild Wins” (a Deli exclusive, yo!):
I wrote most of this song while walking home from work one day in 2017. Sometimes I would walk from the Flatiron district to 3rd avenue and by the time I reached the train, I’d had the basic melody and lyrics in my head. I finally fleshed out the rest of the song and recorded a demo about 4 years later and then sat on it, feeling good about it but feeling like there was just something missing. Enter: Jeff Berner. If it weren’t for him, this song might still be sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Jeff took the song and kicked it up several gigantic notches. He not only got it to finally sound the way I wanted it to sound – he added the achingly beautiful guitars in the last section of the song. In addition, the bridge was the one section I could not seem to feel satisfied with, but Jeff is a wizard and turned it into one of my favorite parts of the song!
Even though “Wild Wins” was written so many years after my first single “Ennui”, it is essentially its opposite in theme, so it feels right to release it as my next single. The songs are about exactly what the titles suggest. The “main character” if you will, is feeling bored, stuck and trapped in “Ennui” and “Wild Wins” is the antidote. It’s all about embracing one’s desires full on.
Basalt Jar’s “Wild Wins” is available on Favorite Place Records wherever music streams…