“Change In The Weather”
by Sky Sunlight Saxon and Flights
2006 song
With a grinding guitar out of the 1980s hair metal scene, and another six-string soaring along knife-edge wah-wahs overhead, "Change In The Weather" is another of Sky Saxon and Ken Dembinski’s gutrock studio concoctions from the 2006 album Tyrants In The House. Those four chords never change; they repeat themselves for almost as many minutes as Sky reads out lyrics that he may or may not have had a hand in writing.
Ken wails on those guitars, over a rhythm section that is barely audible in the mix. This is clearly a duet: guitar plus voice. Everything else, please step to the back of the line.
Sky Saxon, for his part, tries on a startling new vocal style for "Change In The Weather". He curls his syllables like Bob Dylan, but with a hint of Ed Grimley thrown in. Imagine a soft-spoken drama teacher, overemphasizing to his students about enunciation just to make sure they get it. (And then imagine that teacher was raised by a Dylan impersonator and Martin Short, both in character.)
Actually, the analogy of Sky Saxon to a drama teacher is a pretty good one. On "Change In The Weather", his performance is just that: a performance. He usually spoke or shouted or slurred depending on whatever mood he was in when the Record button was pressed. For this one, though, he has basically adopted a persona, a pre-planned guise behind which to hammily act out the lyrics. “Balmy weatherrrr? / Sunny skies 🙂 / All overrrrr / Califorrrr, nya!” he sings in almost a stage whisper.
Lyrically, Mr. Saxon is basically up to his stock-in-trade anti-war ranting. While the sentiments are heartfelt (whoever wrote them), they aren’t exactly complex as poetry. An example:
Bombin’, don’t ya know?
It’s all the bombin’ they done
While he laments at length about suffering people and bleeding animals, the music squirts and flexes all around him. The rhythm is jittery, the guitar sharp and jagged. Put it all together with the words and the singing and it’s like a song from inside a vortex of fire.
For "Change In The Weather", the action is taking place specifically in California, the state and state of mind that had done so much to shape Sky’s life and psyche. If you aren’t overly distracted by Sky Saxon’s quirky vocal take, see if you can get into this meaty, simplistic swirl of sound.
