David Wax Museum's fourth and
boldest studio album to date, Guesthouse
was recently released on October 16th. It's the sound of a band
reconciling the accountability of marriage and parenthood with the uncertainty
and challenges of life on the road; of coming to terms with the limitations of
the "folk" tag that launched their career and pushing past it into
uncharted musical territory; of reimagining their entire approach in the studio
to capture the magic and the bliss of their live show. In typical David Wax
Museum fashion, the songs on Guesthouse
are simplistic and sophisticated, elegant and plainspoken all at once. Rather
than succumbing to the weight of the newfound responsibilities that landed on
their doorstep, the band has leaned into the challenges to capture a brilliant
portrait of the messy beauty of it all.
The roots of David Wax Museum
stretch back nearly a decade, and all the way from New England to Mexico. As a
student at Harvard, Wax began traveling south of the border to study and
immerse himself in the country's traditional music and culture. Back in Boston,
he met fiddler/singer Suz Slezak, whose love of traditional American and Irish
folk music fused with Wax's Mexo-Americana into a singular, energetic blend
that captivated audiences and critics alike. Their 2010 breakout performance at
the Newport Folk Festival made them the most talked-about band of the weekend,
with NPR hailing them as "pure, irresistible joy." They released a
trio of albums that earned escalating raves everywhere from SPIN and
Entertainment Weekly (who described them as sounding "like Andrew Bird
with a Mexican folk bent") to the New York Times and The Guardian (which
dubbed the music "global crossover at its best"). They earned an
invitation to return to Newport, this time on the main stage, as well as dates
supporting The Avett Brothers, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Buena Vista Social
Club, and more.