Propulsive rhythms, uptempo dance-pop-drives and sweet/hazy harmonies smeared with syrupy reverb - Wild Nothing are instant charmers with their tastefully blended brand of 80's-ish aesthetics; the feedback flecked-up just enough to affect that surfy-fuzzed swoon of shoegaze, the synthetic strings woozing their swirling wails over and under the beat just enough to dash in a bit of dream-pop's lull-ish wanderlust and the beats, whether live-kicks or sequenced-echo-splashed-boom-bursts, keep the whole wistful, half-giddy/half-heavy-hearted, gentle, understated dance-party rolling along.
Singer/songwriter/digi-pop-programmer Jack Tatum was able to effectively charm many zines, blogs and music mavens with his 2010 debut Witching Hour, but now the young (23) budding composer's been able to finish an entire album (this month's Nocturne) completely free of the straining studies or looming final exams of his senior year in college. Nocturne is like leafing through the diary of a longing pop-idealist who just got back from that cliched post-college back-packing odyssey through Europe, where he grows a lot, meets new people, deals with self-doubt, gets in touch more deeply with his artistic self while exploring some darker, moodier, and at times headier musical tracts and fully realizes what he wants to accomplish within the context of a pop song.
Still a wonderful blend, sweet, foamy, rhythm-n-synth-centric cuts. - Read what Pitchfork thinks...
They perform the Magic Stick tonight with another notably buzzed band toying with shoegaze reinvention, DIIV. (Watch: DIIV - "How Long Have You Known?")
Get there early for the openers - locals Oblisk -
Oblisk are our own homebred delegates in the similarly-situated sonic realms of drone-dazzled, tone-wrung fuzz-squalling propulso-rock. Oblisk hasn't gotten out enough this year (busy recording their third full length LP with Chris Koltay down at High Bias) but hopefully this signals a possible spat of future stage-returns over the autumn. They're more ones to be the meticulous in-studio craft-honers though - choosing their performances carefully and sparsely - but that just means that when they do come out, it's a force to be reckoned with. Imagine speeding down a wide and empty freeway at 94 mph, night, dark, headlights blazing ahead under a coaxing moon's glow, with the full band in the car seats surrounding you as you only accelerate further, amps in your ears, flexed-drums pounding your chest...faster...louder... That's Oblisk.