Ali Handal and Marc Maron Take Their Guitar Battle Into the Boxing Ring on “High Road”
Ali Handal has found an unusually literal setting for the central conflict behind “High Road.” In the Los Angeles guitarist and songwriter’s new music video, released today, Handal climbs into a boxing ring opposite comedian, podcast host and fellow guitarist Marc Maron. The gloves have been replaced by guitars, and the punches come in the form of traded solos.
The video arrives less than a week after the October 9 release of Handal’s new album, Slow Burn, giving one of the record’s most distinctive collaborations a visual counterpart. Handal’s band performs at ringside while she and Maron face one another in a deliberately playful contest that eventually points back toward the song’s larger subject: the battle between a person’s better instincts and the temptation to give anger or frustration the upper hand.
That idea began with Maron himself. Handal was listening to an episode of his long-running WTF podcast when a comment about the difficulty of being a good partner stayed with her. The observation eventually became the starting point for “High Road,” and Maron later joined Handal in the studio to trade guitar solos on the track before appearing in the video.
Photo credit: Ray Gutierrez
The collaboration fits comfortably within Slow Burn, an album shaped by persistence and the long arc of a creative life. Handal draws from blues, classic rock, funk, soul and singer-songwriter traditions without treating any one of them as the record’s single defining language. The album instead works as a portrait of a musician who has spent decades refining the relationship between songwriting and guitar playing.
That balance is important to the record. Handal has earned attention over the years from guitar-focused outlets including Guitar World, Guitar Player and Vintage Guitar, but Slow Burn consistently places the song ahead of technical display. Even “High Road,” with its guitar duel premise, uses the instrument in service of a specific idea rather than turning the track into an exercise in virtuosity.
Elsewhere, Slow Burn widens its scope through collaborations and reinterpretations. Scarlet Rivera appears on “Perennial,” connecting Handal’s current work with a musician whose violin playing on Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” carried personal significance for Handal from childhood. The record also includes reworked versions of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” and the Beatles’ “Come Together,” approaching familiar material from angles tied to Handal’s own musical history.
The album was produced by Handal with four-time Grammy-winning engineer Seth Atkins Horan and mixed by Grammy-winning producer and engineer Ross Hogarth. Much of it was recorded at Mark Mothersbaugh’s Los Angeles studio, where the sessions emphasized vintage equipment and the guitar tones Handal has developed across years of recording and live performance.
That history gives the title Slow Burn an obvious second meaning. Handal released her debut, Dirty Little Secret, in 2000 and has since toured internationally, appeared on the Billboard charts, sung backup for Neil Young, performed with songwriter Paul Williams and written the Hal Leonard instructional book Guitar for Girls. The new record reflects a career built gradually rather than according to a conventional industry timetable.
Handal will bring Slow Burn to The Baked Potato in Studio City on October 15 for two album release performances at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Both sets will be professionally recorded for a forthcoming live album. With the “High Road” video now putting Handal and Maron face to face in the ring, the week gives the album an appropriately guitar-centered victory lap.
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