The latest collection of recordings by Ed Volker features two fishhead favorites, but most of the songs on the new album are brand new, penned in 2016 and recorded earlier this year.
The album opens with a whoop and then a piano line familiar to most fans of the Radiators. It’s “Jolly House,” which is also the name of one of Volker’s many side projects dating back to 1996. The album closes with another song, “The Blue Distance” that dates to the same period. It is one of the most compelling tunes on the collection—a mid tempo ballad of sorts with a chorus that reflects on the musician’s life on the road that Volker gave up when the Radiators retired. “Dancing in the blue distance, will I never make it home, raven says, ‘Man, you were born to roam’… will I ever make it home.”
Over the course of the thirteen songs on Holy Wine Special many of the lyrical reference points that have been hallmarks of Volker’s songwriting pop up, some in less than expected places. Wine, the spirit world, heaven, the past, the future, and mortality all make appearances in the wry, sometimes mystical words.
New Orleans, of course, is also a central figure in some of these tales. Volker name checks Waldo Drive, the location of the seminal jam session that birthed the Radiators. N. Lopez, a street in Mid City, makes an appearance in “Cigar Box.” “I’m standing here on Lopez, a cigar box holding my ghost…” That’s one hell of an image, but’s it’s the chorus of the song that is most telling—“I got one foot in the graveyard and one foot on the monkey train.”
Using the word “chorus” may be minimizing the inventive construction of “Cigar Box” and several other cuts. “Holy Wine,” the ostensible title song, may very well be the most creative song on the album from a purely musical perspective.
Volker dials up a call-and-response style tune and sings multiple parts. It matches tunes like “Like Dreamers Do,” “My Whole World Flies Apart,” and “Little Paradise” as standout songs that set a new standard stylistically when they debuted.
While some of the vocals suffer under the solo production parameter Volker has been using on his post-Radiators projects, the instrumental work continues to improve. The bass lines, which are played on a keyboard, pop. Instrumental lines evoke guitars and horns. The percussion work is as steady and imaginative as ever.
Holy Wine Special is a welcome addition to Zeke Fishhead’s post-Radiators output. It’s available here.
