There’s this drive in Tulsa I frequented in high school. It starts right on the other side of the river and ends at a gated pool. When I was younger, my mom would take me and my friends to swim there on Sunday afternoons when it was open. Then, one day, we could drive ourselves. We went at midnight, hopped the fence, used their highdive, and got kicked out. Metal, I know. Memories like these are glimpses of growing up, microcosms of maturation and loss of innocence. Four years ago, I started a playlist that matched the vibe of that night, a cool-summer-evening-windows-down-disaffected-youth collection of emotions called skinnydip, with Wild Nothing at the forefront.
I went to a Wild Nothing show last year and developed an even deeper appreciation for (try borderline obsession with) their music. There were maybe 40 people at the concert, and the performance itself was as raw as it gets; no theatrics or flashing lights - just music. Lead vocalist Jack Tatum even stood amongst the crowd for the opening band, wearing a plain baseball hat and a plain bomber jacket and plain pants. The vibe of the entire night catered to an authentic enjoyment of a great set, and the simplicity of their presence allowed space for the complexity of their music. As much as I enjoyed my front row view, it was almost sinful for a room to simultaneously have that kind of energy and any remaining body space. It was so good that I felt bad for anyone who didn’t get to hear what I was hearing. Listening to their studio music already makes you feel so much, but their live music...enthralling and riveting and elevating and every word in between.
Generally speaking, they’ve got an electric blue cinematic 80s sound (electric blue: it makes no sense on paper but so much sense in sound). Their tracks are groovy, bassy, and synthy, showcasing reverb-dense guitar riffs that exhale emotion better than lyrics could. These riffs, complimented by a heavy utilization of flanger and chorus pedals, result in a sound that vacillates between indie rock and dreampop, occasionally edging on surf rock. Add in Tatum’s distinct haunting vocals and you’ll know you’re hearing a Wild Nothing song in the first twenty seconds it’s played. Four LPs and two EPs are quite a bit to thumb through, so here are a few tracks to check out and why I love them.
For starters, their new year’s release “Foyer” has me completely reeling. The build-up to the vocals alone lasts one minute, like an accumulation of thoughts and an emergence of feelings, then a climactic eruption; first the realization, then the reaction. It sounds like going through the past with a fine-tooth comb to distinguish what was real and what was fabricated. “How can I be sure of it? / Memorize the taste of it.” “Foyer” could be considered the response to “Partners in Motion”, also (arguably) about adoration and longing. “Partners in Motion” is a ballad for the passionate, the detail freak, the memory addict, the romantic; a depiction of obsessive behavior from a tormented perspective. Both songs have the capacity to transport you back to a time you felt on fire, leaving you with the inevitable afterburn of yearning and a desperation for one more taste of that moment. Fundamentally, they are dangerously nostalgic.
“Partners in Motion”, however, can be analyzed from a different perspective. Its intended meaning could be to detail a sort of curiosity about the human condition - an interest in why people do what they do. “I caught you in the dollhouse / Drinking coffee with your new wife / How is your new life? / Swiping through headlines / How do you find the time? / You two look very nice.” It’s sarcastic and comical and terrifying. It’s a challenge to distinguish your cookie-cutter life from everyone else’s. It’s an existential crisis. “Canyon on Fire”, an equally intense track from the same album, is topically similar, but more critical of, rather than fascinated with, human behavior. The lyrics compare a minimalist lifestyle with an extravagant one, contending that contentment is not achieved through a lavish hilltop existence but, rather, in a canyon on fire.
Existentialism: a common theme in their music. They find the intersection between “why am I here” and “oh...because it’s possible to feel this way” so many times. That brings us to “Live in Dreams”, where the lyrics explore a certain hollowness that can be found in reality. Would it be better to delve into the subconscious and live in a dream, or live and die? Real life is more vacant than a dream; real life is fleeting, changing, shifting. Dreams - we have no control over dreams; dreams take us where they want to. And what happens when someone we love enters a dream? It’s almost preferable to meet them there, where we’re guaranteed eternity with them. “Because our lips won't last forever / And that's exactly why / I'd rather live in dreams and I'd rather die.” The catchy chorus will get you listening to this song, but its deeper meaning will make you stay and turn it over time and time again.
Finally, there’s “Nocturne”, the inspiration behind my aforementioned pride and joy skinnydip. It’s your classic love song, charged with awe, playfulness, want, and doubt. When you’re with someone, what do you notice? When you’re with someone you’re attracted to, what do you notice? The answer changes. In love and lust, surface-level questions become intimate. The lyrics make quite the leap between “You want to know me, well, what’s to know?” and “You can have me, you can have me all.” It is, at its core, an extremely intimate song, exploring desire - needing to know someone cover to cover, forward and sideways, front to back. Even so, the waterfall riffs dripping reverb all over the track might surpass its lyrical beauty; they sound like eye contact, like a beating heart, like exchanging wavelengths. “Nocturne” is the vibe I wanted skinnydip to capture, the feeling of an intimate, inimitable moment between friends, lovers, or strangers.
Those are five of my favorites, and they’re great tracks for settling into Wild Nothing’s sound. I would put them into a “new but sounds old” category, kind of like The War on Drugs. Anyways, dig into their music, and if you get the chance to see them live, take it.