Ali Handal’s new Marc Maron video turns an internal fight into a guitar duel
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Ali Handal has made the central metaphor of “High Road” difficult to miss. The new video places her opposite Marc Maron in a boxing ring, guitars in hand, as the two trade solos while Handal’s band performs outside the ropes. It is an amusingly oversized treatment of a song about a much quieter kind of confrontation.
“High Road” is concerned with the impulse to react badly and the effort required to resist it. Handal’s inspiration came through Maron’s WTF podcast, where something he said about relationships and anger caught her attention. The thought became a song, and Maron eventually became part of it himself, contributing guitar to the studio recording before stepping into the video.
The release gives renewed attention to Handal’s Slow Burn, which arrived October 9. As an album, it operates in the space where blues-rock technique meets singer-songwriter reflection. Handal’s guitar playing remains unmistakably central, but the record continually redirects attention toward questions of persistence, adulthood and how a creative identity changes over time.
That makes the album’s title particularly effective. Handal began releasing music with Dirty Little Secret in 2000, but Slow Burn does not frame the intervening years as a long wait for validation. Her career during that period included international touring, Billboard chart activity, backup vocals for Neil Young, performances with Paul Williams, music placements in television and film and the publication of Guitar for Girls through Hal Leonard.
The new record instead presents those years as the process through which Handal became increasingly certain of what she wanted her music to sound like. The album’s production, handled by Handal and Seth Atkins Horan with mixing by Ross Hogarth, reflects that specificity. Much of the material was recorded at Mark Mothersbaugh’s Los Angeles studio using vintage equipment selected to support the guitar tones Handal has spent years refining.
“Perennial” broadens the album’s interest in time and change. Scarlet Rivera contributes violin, creating a direct connection to one of Handal’s childhood musical memories. Handal’s father introduced her to Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane,” whose Rivera violin part became inseparable from the song. Decades later, Rivera’s appearance on Handal’s own record turns that early influence into a collaboration.
Handal’s treatment of “Walk This Way” is another place where past and present meet. Her years performing in the all-female Aerosmith tribute band RagDolls gave her an intimate familiarity with the original, allowing her to pull the track into a slower blues setting without losing the specificity of Joe Perry’s famous outro. “Come Together” receives an equally personal reconsideration through vocal harmonies and a tighter arrangement.
The cumulative effect is a record comfortable with its influences because Handal no longer needs to prove distance from them. Blues, classic rock, funk and soul sit beside the confessional instincts of a lifelong songwriter. The resulting album is less concerned with reinvention than refinement.
Handal will carry that material to The Baked Potato on October 15 for performances at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Both shows are being recorded for a forthcoming live album, extending the Slow Burn project almost immediately beyond its studio form. For a record built around endurance, the sequence feels appropriate: release the album, step into the ring, then head back to the stage.
