After working with site favorite R.E. Seraphin, Joel Cusamano is now serving up his own record. Waxworld is full of retro-flavored pop, with flashes of New Wave giving this a cool vibe. For all that is great on Dandy Boy Records that is more shoegaze-y, this is a bracing slab of the kind of thing we'd have called power pop in the Eighties.
Opener "Two Arrows" roars out of the gate like something off the Valley Girl soundtrack. Joel understands how to write a tune, and he gives this stuff a real heft that sets it apart from some of what others have done when attempting to mine the past for contemporary indie. "Another Time, Another Place" has a cool sharpness about it, for example, that recalls early Blondie, while "Maybe in a Different World" made me think of Split Enz a little. The down-tempo "Nineveh" adds something more spectral to the proceedings here, and when combined with the really heavy "Forming", the album closer, it's proof of Joel's command of more than just sharply-etched retro pop.
Throughout Waxworld, Joel Cusamano effortlessly blends some obvious inspiration-points with enough energy to render the resulting tunes superb slices of contemporary alt-rock. That the tunes are catchy, and brightly produced adds to the many appeals of this effort. The material here is uniformly fun, and reminiscent enough of the stuff I was drawn to as an Eighties teen that I can't help but rave a little about this record.
Waxworld by Joel Cusamano is out now via Dandy Boy Records. Details below.
[Photo: Corey Poluk]