For most of Wooden Wand and the Sky High Band’s shiny new album, Second Attention I have the willies quaking up and down my back. The leader of this every-morphing, realigning traveling band – James Toth – isn’t frightening, per se, but one can’t shake the feeling that he knows or wants to know a little black magic just for protective purposes. The record is pretty, gently touching you – some would call it massaging – and then you cock an eyebrow at something that was said. You give Toth the benefit of the doubt. You clear the wax out, but there it was again. There he was clearly singing about how “hot death comes down in a bucket, not in a sack.” That’s something that’s okay to have happen on a Monday or Tuesday, but should be off-limits on weekends. These are apocalyptic allusions, are they not? Here’s what gives them that foamy smoothness that suspends a kind of Tom Cruise panic: Toth and this Sky High Band nail the bedside manner. They love you up with a potion of antiseptic that sanitizes the idea of rampaging bloodthirstiness (or was that already taken care of by seeing God’s portrait in the clouds?) and then cool everyone off with a triumphant blanket of glowing country-ish rock. Some could hear an uplifting story somewhere on Second Attention, but the sneaking suspicion is that Mother Nature’s reclining somewhere sharpening her cleats and her elbows, readying them for the onslaught. Then, just when you wouldn’t think the blood could course any faster or the pulses bulge any thicker, you find out that the Wand finds intangible pleasure in locally smoked beef jerky and Nutella. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse must not be that close. We’ll get a couple more days. – Sean Moeller

Five things that have been helping the days go smoothly on tour
By wand
1. Nutella—Pretty much the perfect snack.
2. The southwest at sunset—Like being on Mars. I remember it being pretty, but damn. “Big Sky” by The Kinks keeps popping into my head.
3. ‘Evil’ by Rennie Sparks—A collection of short stories by one of the greatest and most underrated lyricists America has ever produced.
4. Flying J, Big K, and all truckstops in general—Like a slice of apple pie. Cheap country CDs, local beef jerky, and sunglasses. The spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down on any drive over nine hours.
5. Junior Kimbrough—The constant soundtrack. Totally stoned-out repetitive blues bliss. Like John Lee Hooker plays the William Basinski songbook. Indispensable.

Wooden Wand
Kill Rock Stars Records