Guillermo CastroThere’s a disarming allure to Melanie Paulos’ songwriting that cuts through each stinging chord and drawn-out quaver. It’s there in the way her music bends and weaves into all sorts of resplendent patterns, and in the manner she seems to wring every conceivable ounce of emotional resonance from her voice. Just when you think you’ve latched onto a song’s driving essence, it peels away in the opposite direction. Thus, even Paulos’ most effervescent moments carry an air of plaintive longing; likewise, her most tender confessions tend to bleed with black humor.
Chick Wallace – Salt
Since starting Chick Wallace just over two years ago, the band has grown steadily into a hometown favorite, combining old-fashioned ambition with plucky DIY industriouness. But progress hasn’t always come easy. Although the band has been able to maintain a measure of continuity and remain busy, lineup changes have forced Paulos to adapt her particular aesthetic to new personalities and creative partners. But with the recent release of the group’s new Salt EP, Paulos finally feels like the band is ready to settle in for the long haul.
“This EP is us sealing up the past to a certain extent,” she explains. “It’s half our old lineup and half our current one and we’ve been working on some completely new Chick Wallace. It’s nice that we have a solid and consistent lineup now because everyone’s really invested and stepping up to the plate.”
For Paulos, this transition marks a significant turning point in her artistic evolution. Before starting Chick Wallace she was predominately a visual and circus artist. Her work involved mostly painting and installations, and she performed in a tarot card based show for contemporary circus company the Fox and Beggar Theater. Music was—at most—a secondary passion. In fact, her reasons for starting the group had far less to do with creative ambition than a desire for practical self-improvement.
“I wanted to be a part of a band to get a little better at playing guitar,” Paulos reveals. “I thought it would be just a fun side thing that I could do. Now it’s kind of become my main form of expression.”
“I didn’t really start writing fully realized songs until a few months before Chick Wallace began,” she continues. “I had a studio at Downtown Players Club after I returned from touring with the circus and heard about Mammals Only open mic. I wrote ‘Ghost’ 15 minutes before I went and signed up.”
Credit: Melanie Paulos
Despite arriving to the form with little training, Paulos fast displayed a remarkable intuition for songwriting. Within a few months of launching the group, she had crafted a string of gritty and dramatic songs that would go on to form the backbone of Chick Wallace’s debut. Created with the help of drummer Max Boydston and bassist Alex Glick, The Chick Wallace EP was a bold and stormy introduction that quickly captivated local audiences. At the heart of the record was the aforementioned “Ghost,” a haunting (no pun intended), early R.E.M.-channeling cut that would go on to earn a spot in our year-end list of best local songs.
In 2018, the group followed up their debut with a pair of singles that took the band’s music in exciting new directions. But while both “Boah” and “Television Girl” appear on Salt, together they signal the closing of Chick Wallace’s past as Paulos alluded to earlier. So although each cut is a laudable effort in their own way, the focus of the EP bends more naturally towards the two new tracks that appear on it—not to mention the reconfigured lineup that came together to write and perform them.
Sonically, “Salt” and “Arms” represent a marked departure from the jangly, freewheeling aesthetic that defined much of Chick Wallace’s early material. With Ryan York taking over for Boydston on drums and Tim Sherrill now appearing on lead guitar, the new songs are punchier and more compact, trading open-ended sprawl for more a concise power-pop thrust. While some of this change can be attributed to Paulos’ further embrace of artists like Pat Brown of Treepeople and Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch, she credits most of the transformation to group’s evolving dynamics and the effects its had on her as a songwriter.
“Our newest songs are way more collaborative,” Paulos says. “We’re all writing music and bringing it to the table. I’m stoked on it. I don’t know much about theory or even the names of the chords I play typically. I just know shapes. Writing together is starting to force me out of that natural comfort zone.”
For Paulos, part of setting aside those instinctive tendencies is remembering that she is relatively new to the band experience and still coming to terms with herself as a songwriter. So while she may have a distinct vision of the music she wants to create (“I love biting walls of sound and lyricism that isn’t too shrouded in metaphor,” she says), there is still much she has to learn—both about herself and the songwriting process in general. To that end, Paulos reveals it can sometimes be a struggle to relinquish control, but the resulting mix of creativity and camaraderie are something she’s been searching for a long time.
“I just didn’t know how much work a band was,” she admits. “It’s challenging to work with multiple people, especially when someone’s creative expression is involved. We’re all really supportive and constructive when we communicate. It’s something I’ve always wanted and it feels so nice to collaborate. There’s nothing better than really vibing while playing.”
Still, for the moment at least, Chick Wallace remains very much a vehicle for Paulos’ self-expression. Lyrically, the majority of Salt’s material draws from her personal poetry and speaks to her particular worldview. Over the course of the EP, she offers up ruminations on love (“Television Girl”), insights on identity (“Salt”), and shares her struggles with bipolar disorder (“Arms”). But while Paulos may be the de facto face and voice of Chick Wallace, she would be the first to acknowledge how crucial her bandmates contributions and collaboration have been to the group’s development and growth. And that, more than anything else, has her excited for what comes next.
“I think it’s the first time we’ve settled into who we want to be as a band,” she declares. “I’m stoked about this EP and I’m looking forward to our future as a group.”
Chick Wallace will appear tomorrow on Closer Look with Rose Scott on WABE’s 90.1 FM. The program will air first at 1 p.m.. and again at 9 p.m. and can be streamed live on wabe.org.
More Info
Bandcamp: chickwallace.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @chickwallaceatl
Instagram: @chickwallaceatl