David Wax Museum

• Alt Folk

In the presence of the strange digital drone of hospital machines, David Wax’s thoughts turned to 13 songs and the changes they give voice to. After suddenly and inexplicably collapsing, Wax—half of David Wax Museum alongside wife and bandmate Suz Slezak—was headed for a heart catheterization in his hometown of Columbia, Missouri, his doctors suspecting a heart attack. At a moment with more questions than answers, he hurriedly signed his name to a waiver—and was struck by a revelation. “Lying there on that stretcher the thing that kept running through my mind was: at least we made You Must Change Your Life, Wax recalls. “Whatever else happened, I felt at peace because this record exists.”
The album is an openhearted manifesto – a collection that embodies, then transcends bedrock elements of the band’s 15-year recording career. For Wax, music has guided every step he holds sacred; he’s followed its palpable power, abiding by its requisite unpredictability. After graduating at the top of his class at Harvard, he wandered off an academic path to southern Mexico, finding what he calls “a clear before/after moment in my life.” There, he studied folk music “at the feet of the masters” and internalized structures and rhythms that continue to drive the band today. He and Slezak fell in love on their first national tour, setting in motion a future full of vivid waking dreams. Together (now with their two children in tow) they’ve logged 1,500 shows in every corner of the globe. From the back of a pick-up truck in Nome, Alaska at a solstice parade, to a surreal moment in a tent filled with a thousand Czechs hollering along to their iconic song “Harder Before It Gets Easier,” these dreams continue to unfold for Wax and Slezak. Their latest effort encapsulates this wildly winding spirit and delivers the past-, present- and future-tense promises Wax and Slezak consider their shared purpose as musicians. The album boldly testifies: Your life will change with deliberation, but also in the mere act of living. The album is a celebration and an invocation, pure and infallible: It’s never too late. What are you waiting for? You must change your life.