Joel Cusumano is an Oakland, CA based singer/songwriter/guitarist. A member of numerous Bay Area bands since 2009, Cusumano has touched on musical styles ranging from power pop to post-punk in bands such as R.E. Seraphin, Body Double, Sob Stories, and Cocktails.  In high school, he cut his teeth by teaching himself Elvis Costello chords and Jimmy Page riffs in his bedroom on his $100 Crate brand Stratocaster knockoff guitar. In college, Cusumano’s first band MSO worshipped power poppers such as The Exploding Hearts and Cheap Trick, and they were known as much locally for their ridiculous antics as for their music. Since those heady days, in addition to honing his writing, arranging, and guitar playing skills in various Bay Area groups, he’s sobered up, diversified his taste profile (he cites Franco Battiato, Magazine, and Yes as spiritual influences as much as the expected indie rock his music evokes), and of late crossed an ocean of regret, heartbreak, and alienation that informed his debut solo album Waxworld. The album is haunted by the ghosts of history (Cusumano demonstrates a keen knowledge of classical and Biblical references) and his own personal struggles, which included a trip in recent years to a mental hospital. But relax, it’s not a slog; Waxworld is classic pop/rock inspired by the songs below as well as other jangle pop/college rock faves such as Guided by Voices, Teenage Fanclub, and The Replacements. Anyway it’s easier to listen to his music than to explain it! Waxworld was released in October by Dandy Boy Records.

What Joel says: “This was the last song written for Waxworld, and ironically it became the lead-off track and the first single released. Two Arrows was composed in the wake of an unanticipated and painful breakup. At the time I’d been reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the concept is pretty obviously his version of the Apollo and Daphne myth suffused with some autobiography. Musically I had in mind those killer uptempo Clash singles like Capital Radio One and The Prisoner from the Super Black Market Clash CD I so treasured as a teenager. I wanted something with high wattage to kick off the album and our live set. And maybe there’s something super deep and poignant about starting an album off as a dedication “To Eros, son of Venus.” Just kidding about that last bit -I actually didn’t decide what order the songs would be in until we started mixing. The third verse ending “I held you as through grains of sand / you passed through me just like the wind” are the best breakup lines I’ve ever written. I think I can stop writing breakup songs after this. I’m getting bored of them. And honestly I don’t think I can survive another romantic split so devastating.“

“An album is only as strong as its closing statement, and Forming is mine. In 2020 I spent time in a mental hospital; not only had I descended into a paralyzing OCD madness, but I had relapsed on booze and pills. It was a personally apocalyptic time, and Forming is a broadening of my bitter eschatological preoccupations. A lot of albums end on a pat, hopeful note; but that’s not my style, Jack. I want to leave the listener a bit dyspeptic after digesting Waxworld. Look, I write pop songs, I’m all for making things enjoyable (it’s an effective way to communicate subversive ideas), but I reject the idea of art as pure emollient, which seems to be in high consumer demand in the music world. Final note: Reviving the prophetic themes earlier in Waxworld, in Forming’s last line I offer my own oracle: “Nothing can be preserved.”“

His Mixtape: “Below is a mingling of tracks that I consider among the finest rock of the last couple years, as well as older tunes that informed me in some way during the creation of Waxworld“.

Magic Fig – Flammarion

It’s a delight that not only is there a contemporary band doing the kind of prog that I’ve been personally submerged in for the last decade, but they are Bay Area based. Inna Showalter’s voice enriches Magic Fig’s complex textures, adding a dream-y character to the band’s brand of prog, which is in the vein of stuff that’s right up my alley like Curved Air and Camel.

The Tours – Language School

Riveting example of power pop as essential form. The song is quasi avant-garde in the way every section is hammered and repeated with zero variation. The lyrics are intelligible but quasi-nonsense, and I doubt they represent any deep concerns of the singer; they simply sound cool. I’ve been obsessed with Language School since I heard it on Powerpearls Volume 1 as a teenager. Back when the world was new.

The Goods – Sunday Morning

My friend and collaborator (he engineered and performs on Waxworld) Rob Good is a modern-day McCartney. He writes such palpably immediate pop/rock in the book that you almost miss the rigor and ingenuity of his lyrics. “I don’t know your name / I don’t get your meaning / Many miles from you to me.” This one has such a killer groove that’s massaged perfectly during the solo, and that opening riff is positively Steve Howe-ian.

Diners – Someday I’ll Go Surfing

Diners is simply one of the best pop groups going right now, and this is my favorite track by the band (at least of material that’s currently released!). Someday I’ll Go Surfing is a wistful, majestic track that balances soft bounciness and a fuzzy edge that explodes in the solo; it’s really blistering stuff live!

Whitney’s Playland – Long Rehearsal

My submission for best single of 2025 (OK, after my own song Two Arrows!). Heart-wrenching, evocative, and under two minutes long. Guitarist George Tarlson’s opening arpeggio jangle is deceptively simple but slyly alternates over successive bars—the sign of a real master—while the melancholy vocals of singer Inna Showalter (who between Whitney’s Playland and Magic Fig has her stamp on some of this year’s best music) highlight a chorus refrain that uses different lyrics each time through. Take note, songwriters—little textures like that make listeners want to revisit songs even when they’re short and sweet.

Giuni Russo – Lettera al governatore di Libia

I could have chosen any Franco Battiato-penned songs from what I consider his peak, roughly the years 1979-1982, but this one that he wrote and produced for Giuni Russo has been knocking around in my head lately. The lyrics are an imagined missive to the brutal Italian fascist colonial administrator Rodolfo Graziani—bracing subject matter for a pop song. I’m becoming bored with love songs, so this is more compelling stuff to me these days. Of course, Battiato was a master of both love songs and philosophical songs. Lettera… is a pinnacle of the sound that Battiato had cultivated this time. His skeletal fuzz guitars, marching groove with Thin Lizzy-style drum fills, and use of Giusto Pio’s soaring violin never found better accompaniment than Russo’s blistering operatic voice. 

Cristina – Things Fall Apart

The downtown NYC Christmas song for those of us whose relationship with the holiday is more characterized by alienation and disillusion than humdrum holly-jolly and egg nog. Cristina was the caustic pop poetess of ‘80s no wave, and Things Fall Apart perfectly balances her frosty sneering and wounded vulnerability. It’s a formal masterclass in pop songwriting, each verse a bleak vignette recounting different ghosts of the singer’s Christmas past, culminating the third verse’s concluding resignation: “I caught a cab back to my flat / And wept a bit / And fed the cat.”

Yellow Magic Orchestra – Wild Ambitions

Maybe my favorite YMO song, one that explodes with atmosphere and ideas. Rising and falling synths, clanking industrial percussion, hazy lyrics delivered in a dreamy vocal by Haruomi Hosono, and a classical piano instrumental “chorus” refrain. Perfect outro track to a perfect album, 1983’s Naughty Boys.

Waxworld is out now via Dandy Boy Records. Look HERE for more information on Joel Cusumano.