Balthazar

Balthazar’s last album Rats was in my ears for a good six weeks straight because immediately following the first time I heard the song “Sinking Ship” I got all itchy and started wearing an ankle length trench coat and talking with a lazy jaw. Holy shit that song was my lover for a while there, my wife was kinda pissed.

I was seriously smitten, but smitten is a shitty excuse for the word to use here bro. Smitten is your basic Boones Farm to my fuck you this is super uber dank bourbon barreled craft rareball’d high ABV booze bro.

I was druuunk on that Balthazar bros. Numb at the fingertips and loosey goosey in the neck; I was making poor life decisions based around my assumptions about how the members of this band saw life around them.

Obviously European as fuck, where things can be dirty as shit but still proper as hell, these guys are somehow pouring sunshiney slow motion smiles over an almost blatant feeling of gray skied brooding. But instead of happy clouds and rainbows, these assholes are spray painting brightly colored cocks n balls on churches and having happy hours every other hour, tact and cloudy skies be damned.

For me, Thin Walls takes that next delicious step towards an all out fandom. I’m three days away from writing Balthazar fucking fan fiction bro. I’ve already attempted to mimic their collective walk. And keep in mind I have no way of confirming this because I refuse to get too caught up in any real characteristics of this band because the way I have imagined them is too cinematic to adjust at this point.

I will not googles these makers of the musics I so adore.

In my head the members of Balthazar wear turtlenecks and wool 12 months out of the year. A fave ascot or two for every season. Corduroy, weathered denim, and then handmedown suits on special occasions. See, the people in Balthazar have this unspoken misery where they share in their suffering by both acknowledging it and painting the aforementioned cocks and balls in as fierce a demonstration of spite as one could muster mister.

But the sound of this album is so fucking ridiculously seamless. It doesn’t just start and then over time gain the feeling of ending, this shit is like a fucking puddle riddled with ripples without ridges. It’s covered in whimsical strings, b’dass brass, evil winds and magical fucking melody driven members of the percussion family. It’s pieced together like the soundtrack of a film adapted from a live musical you’ve seen a thousand times and could reenact in your sleep.

Thin Walls from Balthazar sounds like the musical equivalent of strategically balancing and maneuvering a metal marble through a hand held wooden maze that’s littered with obstacles and pitfalls too many to reference here. It isn’t herky, nor jerky. It’s just fucking smooth.

Balthazar sounds like the only perfect way I could describe the physical personification of sliding through your day. There’s no hopping, no stopping. Nothing abrupt, nothing sudden. Never a halt, never a pause.

Balthazar is a masterpiece drawn in one continuous and contiguous stroke. Flowing and ebbing and relaxingly serene, Thin Walls is everything I had hoped the next Balthazar album would be. And knowing this came out in March of 2015, and intentionally avoiding it out of fear it wouldn’t be as amazing as I had prayed to the dark lord it would be, and then getting dick slapped in the face with such a perfect album, has been the best surprise face cock I’ve heard all year.

A poorer, cooler man’s Oasis, a Belgian’s sandwich of Julian Lennon (seriously, listen to “So Easy” again bro), U2 and maybe The National, Balthazar’s latest is so on fucking point, I’m almost more in love with the small details than the obvious demonstrations of beauty.

The details might not make themselves fully aware to you for the first few listens, but I can pick something from every song to cherish:

• *The reverb on the snaps during “Decency”
• *The “wooowoooo”’s on “Then What”
• *The dirty fucking bass on “Nightclub” being flanked by just the smoothest violin on the planet.
• *The smile I can’t help but form as the drums and bass come in on “Bunker”
• *Ok, the entire fucking “Bunker” song
• *The drunk vocal harmony of “Wait Any Longer” and then the “wooooo” in the background
• *The humming on “Dirty Love” being almost as important vocally as the verses being sung, I swear to fuck this song is as close to what receiving a blowjob feels like as I’ve ever experienced
• *Whatever the fuck is happening at 2:21 on "Last Call", I want it to keep happening all day, every day, forever, fuck
• *The intoxicated guitar lick as it starts and the let’s all sing with our arms around each others shoulders as we do our best to drain the pub of every last ounce of booze of “I Looked For You”
• *The final act-ness of “True Love” and how it TOTALLY SOUNDS LIKE DUDE IS WEARING A CAPE AND TRODDING THROUGH A MISTY FOGGY CEMETARY BRO

Fuck. I just want this album to keep playing.