It already feels surreal that Fauxchella VI was only a month ago. Hundreds of like minded fans and bands gathered in the small college town of Bowling Green to celebrate music and support each other for three days. With two stages on opposing sides of Howard’s Club the music was nonstop. Even locals passing by peeked their head in to see what all the hubbub was only to find the event was completely sold out.
While there were many great bands that stunned the crowd that all deserve to have glowing reviews written about them (which will certainly come in due time) I want to focus on the last act of the weekend. Jetty Bones, who took the stage at 11 PM on Sunday night had an intimate crowd of the Summit Shack crew, the DIY crowds strongest soldiers, and people who did not have to make their long journey home before going back to work/school in the morning. We got the full Jetty Bones experience, some of the more fun and poppier songs to dance out the last remaining bits of energy. But also some of the most heart wrenching and vulnerable songs that can really just crack open the most emotionally closed off person and turn them into a puddle of tears.
But most importantly, Kelc Galluzzo explained some of the background and history behind her record “Push Back”. The most fascinating thing to me was that the songs could be listened to in reverse order to get the ‘true’ experience of the growth and self healing journey. Starting with Bug Life and ending with Waking Up Crying. So this past week I spent time going back to listen to one of my favorite albums of 2021 with a new perspective.
Kelc closed off Fauxchella with what we are now viewing as the opening track to what I am calling Push Backwards. She explains that at the end of Bug Life you hear some voicemails from loved ones who have reached out and checked in on her on days where she wasn’t able to respond. It’s an incredibly harrowing feeling knowing that these could have been some of the last words Galluzzo wrote, but thankfully she is still with us making music, spreading her boundless joy with fans and saintly generosity with local lost animals. The last verse has the acoustic guitar drop out to highlight the heavenly chorale of Kelc’s range “This cliff hanger is you over the edge / You’re falling off soon”. The next song is Bad Trick, which starts by displaying the struggle of alcohol addiction which Kelc has not been shy of sharing in the past on songs like Second Death in the Rabbit Hole. Which is a pattern of this album, to highlight not only the victories of overcoming trauma and problems, but presenting them in an honest and vulnerable way. This song also references some of the other songs Waking Up Crying and Waking Up Exhausted which are on this record.
Dolly is a sonic left turn to hearing all the typical trappings of a country song in a Disney movie running the whole gamut of banjo, harmonica, pedal steel, and all the twang of Alameda Slim. All the while maintaining the same disguised hopelessness songwriting Jetty Bones songs are known for. Cold opening with “I’m just trying to figure out who I want to be this week / Because I know it’s not me”, throughout the evolution in the song as it gets more dire we end “I’m just trying to figure out how I want you all to grieve / Because I know I gotta leave”. It feels like a callback to the ending of Bug Life where reversed acoustic guitar gives a ghostly underpinning to Kelc responding to the voicemails and her own tearful apology, “Well you can stay / But I can’t stay here”
Eric Egan of Heart Attack Man fame joins with guest vocals briefly on the next song Bad Time, and who better to be assisting with sharing of the morose tongue in cheek contents of the song. Like getting interrupted in the middle of dying, saying that she does not have anxiety she just suffers from the most typical symptom, naming your demons Linda, and putting Kelc on an impossible parasocial pedestal who still ends up crying under the merch table. The song ends with “Thanks for coming to my show, I’m a fucking phony”, which now feels like graduating out of the intro to the album where the themes have been setup and we got the sillies out. But we have one more song that could be short enough to be called an interlude, Waking Up Exhausted, again addressing alcoholism before in her most grandiose circus ring leader impression Kelc shouts “Welcome to my shit show everybody”.
After a slow sax drenched confrontation with feeling imposter syndrome induced by more drinking in Ravine, we do come to a more bouncy track in Taking up Space. But not to be fooled, this song is still riddled with self doubt and the urge to self sabotage your own successes. This is also a song that features some of my favorite poetic and cleverly written verses about pushing through a brick wall of bees, pulling on threads and getting tangled in the woes, and the duality of feeling like a train in the sense of both being an incredible mechanical achievement yet still being seen as an obstacle by most.
Kelc doesn’t slow down after that, instead we get several verses of rapid fire lines that feel like tongue twisters that come out perfectly in the song Everything. Throughout the song we are given a few moments to catch our breath in the floating choruses “Everything changes / When you don’t take care of it”. This does feel more at place towards the end now that it discusses how relationships change and degrade when you aren’t able to be present for them or be honest about the challenges and struggles in life. The flipside to this is the next track That’s All, which maintains dizzyingly quick delivery for the last verse but contrasts Everything by detailing the ways in which you need to support and uplift the people close to you and how they help keep your head above water as well. The music backing this confessional appreciation is fairly stripped down guitar that gets lost in the percussion as it comes and goes periodically with piano and strings following along, But for the most part leaves Kelc’s signature layered vocals and harmonies as the focus.
Rounding the home stretch we get one of the most fun songs on the record, an 80’s pop anthem breakup in the neon lights of a rainy city night and a return of the iconic ‘melt-your-heart’ sax that we should credit Carly Rae Jepsen for reviving in “Emotion” (2015). There is something to say here about unhealthy attachment styles which can develop over a long period of mental health struggles and isolation as outlined in the front half of the song, and that even though this journey of healing has been successful, there are still lingering after effects that can sabotage the good parts. Waking Up Crying is the grand finale which plays out to me like a letter from Galluzzo to herself. Where part of her that wants to move forward is asking her inner fears and insecurities why she remains so closed off and untrusting why she has a negative self image, or why even considering to take personal account is such a challenge. Kelc repeats the ending line “I would laugh, but I woke up crying”
I would say that I think I do prefer this direction as I do come out of the album feeling significantly less existential dread and an urge to call my friends and ask them about their day or do something fun or even just spend the day cleaning and practicing self care. Listening to it in its released order also has its time and place but it has been very eye opening to get this new perspective on the life of an artist whose music has been part of the soundtrack to my personal growth. Kelc has included easter eggs and secrets in some of her past releases, and it is perhaps another part of the belief that music extends beyond the songs and carries more meaning than just the words and notes on the page, bites on a CD, or grooves on a record. These are stories of real people who are willing to go to such great lengths to share a feeling in a way that cannot be captured by language alone. I love Jetty Bones and I cannot wait to see what comes next for them.
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