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Power Ballads

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Will Boast

September 2011

Ryan Wilson

Will Boast’s Power Ballads, winner of the Iowa Award for Short Fiction, can at times feel as layered and as over-produced as its moniker. For one, the book, thematically linking the lives of various musicians, unfolds as a short-story cycle, which by the nature of the form allows a freedom and an unevenness to the storytelling on par with, say, Van Halen post-David Lee Roth.

Will Boast’s Power Ballads, winner of the Iowa Award for Short Fiction, can at times feel as layered and as over-produced as its moniker. For one, the book, thematically linking the lives of various musicians, unfolds as a short-story cycle, which by the nature of the form allows a freedom and an unevenness to the storytelling on par with, say, Van Halen post-David Lee Roth.

It’s the sort of collection that goes down easy with both hipsters queued to the scene and those un-hip and ready to critique both hipsters and their scene. Boast threads that needle via the details. For example, in “Lost Coast,” when we meet West Coast upstart singer-songwriter Keaton Wilding (one part Bon Iver, two parts Fleet Foxes), a childhood friend turned music critic need only judge his fashion choices to understand Keaton’s philosophy: “The sandals and ball cap were gone, replaced by threadbare cords, a faded Members Only jacket, and, the latest in affections, a pair of boat shoes, no socks. Clothes chosen to be a parody of clothes.” Yet this zeitgeist specimen fares better than his backing band: “your typical bunch of wasters—longhaired, glassy-eyed disciples of their instruments who could break your heart with a string bend, a rim check, a double lead—who in ten years would probably be redoing the siding on your house.”

It would be both easy and interesting for this music critic to narrate a traditional novel full of musician characters, but Boast returns throughout Power Ballads to the adventures of the more subdued jazz drummer, Tim. In the lead story, “Sitting In,” Tim is a middle-school kid addicted to playing polka music with middle-aged men each Sunday night in southern Wisconsin. In the title (and most amusing) story, Tim gains experience by playing the skins for the reunion tour of a little remembered 80s hair band called Soldier, in which each band member dresses in some sort of military garb on stage (“you’re describing the Village People,” Tim’s girlfriend tells him). They also recreate the Iwo Jima Memorial on stage each night during songs such as “Iron Curtain” and “DMZ,” heavy metaphors for the various combats of the heart. Later in “Dead Weight,” Tim turns into the veteran musician when he’s hired by the studio to tour with a radio-friendly act of young twins “concocted in some secret lab buried deep in the vanilla heart of America.” The twins sing songs entitled “Crazy Girrrl” and “Hooded Justice” as Tim pretends to play the drums behind them to a soundtrack being cranked through the sound system.

While Boast’s humor and cynicism regarding the industry are pitch-perfect, he also invests in Tim as a character, complicating his story arc with troubled relationships with his fiancée Kate and his father. Several of the best stories don’t involve music at all, but instead delve into the sacrifices children make for their aging and disabled parents. In “Beginners” Tim must weigh his own dreams of playing with a notable jazz musician across Europe while visiting his blue-collar father who’s just suffered an industrial accident. In “The Bridge,” Tim visits Kate, who’s put her life on hold to care for her fragile mother who never liked her daughter dating a musician. In the finale, “Coda,” Tim reflects back on his disjointed relationship with Kate, and how his waking hours of the day were so divergent from her mainstream life.

Besides “Lost Coast,” only two of the stories veer away from Tim’s orbit. “Sidemen” taps into the long-suffering spouse of a John Prine-ish folk singer. But her longings are what you’d expect: insecurities about motherhood and fidelity. “Mr. Fern, Freestyle” is the typical redemption song of a retired funkmaster turned choir teacher who wakes up one day when his students decide to make music of their own. Though thematically relatable, these two offerings feel more like B-side material.

Given his eye for detail and the scope of the lives he’s created, Boast’s first book ironically feels as promising as the much-hailed EP his singer-songwriter Keaton Wilding releases in “Lost Coast.” Boast’s collection earns his own generic praise: “An astonishing debut.” And yet Power Ballads still feels like the EP paving the way for something more: the LP, or in Boast’s case, a complete novel.

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