_{By Andy McFerren}

I have not confirmed this, but I am 95% sure that Bly Wallentine’s album I Found My Foot 🙂 is about a journey in the midst of a psychedelic haze to find their own foot, aided by their trusty sidekick Nyan Cat. A great epic filled with monsters, battles of life or death, adventure, betrayal, and much more – The Odyssey brought to the modern world with Bly as Homer. Given that they currently possess two feet, I feel it’s safe to say that their journey was a success. 

I Found My Foot 🙂 is a wonderfully fun album. With clear influences from David Bowie, I begin to wonder why more artists are not returning to a time where the lines of pop and rock were blurred (before I remember how much of a herculean task to do that successfully really is). If more people could evoke the spirit of Bowie, they would. But few—Bly included—succeed. The album contains a complex soundscape with a laundry list of musical instruments that would be as long as a CVS receipt if I typed them all out.

Bly wastes no time in embarking on the aforementioned sojourn across space and time. “Room of the Wasted Sighs,” the first track on the album, sets the tone and precedent for the rest of it. In a day and age where song length has been perfectly manicured down to a length of 3:30 or under for most commercially sold pop music, Bly goes back to the days of lengthy rock songs containing each stage of plot structure, with multiple songs clocking in at over five minutes. (For those of you who have forgotten the basic components of plot structure, they are Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution.)   

If you need an example of this, look no further than “Comedy of Errors/Tragedy of Eros.” While the song has a run time just under five minutes, it tells a rich story, containing the following lyrics, which are probably my favorite, along with a “feature” from “Elmo” later in the song:

I’ve been possessed by an alien 
and it’s got a lot to say
about an imminent catastrophe 
so I’m cutting out its tongue

The entire album is full of little nuggets like the one above that produce such vivid, unforgettable imagery. Some of the lyrics, even after breaking them down and piecing them together, I am not even sure what they mean. But the images they produce are undeniable. Oh, and that feature from Elmo? I had to ask Bly about the startling and hilarious cameo on the song. His response: a deepfake voice generator. (To understand this completely, you’re just going to have to listen to it.)

Make sure to follow Bly Wallentine on Instagram and listen to “Comedy of Errors/Tragedy of Eros” below!