San Francisco Album Preview Show This Saturday at Great American Music Hall
West Coast Tour Dates Announced
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Wax Idols are excited to share their new single “Crashing” from their forthcoming record, Happy Ending, due May 16 via the band’s label Etruscan Gold Records. “Crashing” can be shared at YouTube or Spotify. Happy Ending follows up Wax Idols’ critically acclaimed album American Tragic which was Etruscan Gold Records’ inaugural release. Happy Ending can be pre-ordered now digitally and on limited edition vinyl at Bandcamp or the band’s imprint Etruscan Gold.
Wax Idols have announced West Coast tour dates which will include shows in Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland and an album preview show in San Francisco on April 14 at Great American Music Hall where Wax Idols will play all of Happy Ending from start to finish.
The San Francisco show will be the first time hometown fans can hear the new record in its entirety. Additionally, fans at the Great American Music Hall show can also pre-order a limited edition LP from the band’s merch table that comes with a lyric zine which is already sold out online.
Last month Wax Idols revealed their new music video for “Mausoleum” from Happy Ending. The video was filmed by Dalton Townsend at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. About the video Wax Idols’ Hether Fortune says, “We made this video ourselves with our friend Dalton Townsend and an old Sony Hi8 camcorder.
The Monty Python-esque shenanigans are meant to stand in contrast to the bleak environment and subject matter of the song: life carries on after tragedy, but even though you learn to live with the pain of loss, it never really goes away.
‘Mausoleum’ is a song about that feeling—when a memory or random experience has you unexpectedly thinking again about a loved one, and it almost feels like they’ve come back, just for a moment.”
Wax Idols are a four-piece based out of Oakland, CA; their sound calls on the mutated aesthetics of varying strains of post-punk (songwriting elements from darkwave and Factory/Rough Trade pioneers, as well as the complex interplay and emotion of post-hardcore) and classic pop-rock hooks, without carbon-copying those who made these maps. Hether Fortune’s powerful voice (as songwriter, arranger, producer, singer and guitarist) is at the center, but this makes no other member of the band a replaceable element. Their work together is what makes Wax Idols’ energy so vital.
Their fourth and forthcoming album Happy Ending is an exploration of the abstraction and finality of death from philosophical, political, and personal perspectives.
The painting on the cover of a figure mourning is by Oakland artist Lena Gustafson, whose work focuses on what she has described as “how memories are stored in the body.” Fortune says the band picked her to create the art because her work is “post-body, which has a lot to do with what our album is about.”
The dual theme of political anxiety and personal experience is one Fortune began exploring in seriousness on Wax Idols’ third album, American Tragic, which Pitchfork proclaimed “smartly unpacks a pretty universal experience—the sadness, nostalgia, and occasional euphoria involved in letting go of something you once cared about, even when it desperately hurts.”
Wax Idols’ lineup on the new record is founder and frontperson Hether Fortune (vocals, guitar, bass, organ) with Peter Lightning (guitar, bass, organ, piano), Rachel Travers (drums), and Marisa Prietto (bass, backing vocals).
Since the album’s completion, Bay Area musician Greer McGettrick (formerly of The Mallard) has joined the band on bass. Happy Ending was recorded in 2017 at Ruminator Audio in San Francisco, CA and produced by Fortune, Lightning, and Monte Vallier.
Wax Idols Tour Dates
04.14 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall * (tickets) 06.01 – Sacramento, CA @ Red Museum ^ (tickets) 06.02 – Reno, NV @ The Holland Project ^ (tickets) 06.04 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux ^ (tickets) 06.06 – Vancouver, B.C. @ The Astoria ^ (tickets) 06.07 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza % (tickets) 06.08 – Olympia, WA @ Cryptatropa % 06.09 – Portland, OR @ Tonic Lounge % (tickets) 06.15 – Oakland, CA @ Eli’s Mile High Club # (tickets) 06.16 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Hi Hat # (tickets)
* album preview show with Pardoner & Humid
^ with Screature
% with Screature & Dead Spells
# with Houses of Heaven & Foie Gras
Happy Ending Track List
1. Heaven Knows 2. Too Late 3. Belong 4. Mausoleum (stream) 5. Crashing (stream) 6. 123 7. Scream (stream) 8. Ashes 9. Devour 10. Had It Good 11. Missed Call
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Photo Credit: Matthew Vincent 
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