Premiere: Balto, ‘Still Don’t Know (What Love Is)’

Kevin Bronson on December 10th, 2018

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Roots-rock raconteurs Balto moved to L.A. from Portland earlier this year in search of new inspirations. The quartet had two full-lengths and an EP on their resumé and a style that might appeal to fans of Delta Spirit, Deer Tick and (the sunnier side of) early My Morning Jacket.

Their music has been described as “boozy,” but that’s selling them short. Only a sober singer — and a motormouth at that — could plow through the lyrics of the Dylanesque “Bullshit Dream,” which, verse after verse, is a stream-of-consciousness cascade of reasons we might all be going to hell in a handbasket. No, really, read them. Our favorite might be the description of a TV anchor as having “the average straight white pronoun blues.” And there’s still a war on Christmas, by the way.

The band features singer-guitarist Daniel Sheron, backed by the gang vocals of drummer Seth Mower, bassist Bronco Mower and guitarist Carl Osterlof. Their latest single is the typically galloping “Still Don’t Know,” which navigates the roiling waters of uncertainty at full throttle.

“‘Still Don’t Know (What Love Is)’ might be the only song I ever wrote where I heard someone else’s voice singing it before I finished,” Sheron says. “I was staying in a little camper with a Spinnet piano and a tape recorder on the Washington coast and began to hear Jason Isbell’s voice in my head while banging out the chords. Now, the end result sounds nothing like a Jason Isbell song, but I’d still kill to hear him sing this thing.”

For all the song’s vein-bulging energy, there’s a serious bout of soul-searching going on here. “Uncertainty and the inevitability of growing older have been constant themes in my writing over the last few years — where that intersects with knowing what’s true and right for yourself and what’s a social construct can be terribly confusing, if not misleading,” Sheron says. “I was thinking about that as I approached the verses of this song — there’s so much collective pressure pushing some version of so-called objective truth – what deeply personal emotions like love are supposed to feel like, what they’re supposed to mean. Maybe the others are right, maybe they’re all full of shit, I still don’t know.”

“Still Don’t Know” follows last month’s release of “Black Snake, Mojave Blues” (another lyrical thicket), a song that the band has said is “about the mistake of moving to Los Angeles.” Guys, it happens.

||| Stream: “Still Don’t Know (What Love Is)”