Review: Wild Pink – S/T

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Following in the slipstream of Pinegrove’s resurgent folk punk, Wild Pink’s self-titled debut LP sequesters animated guitars, considerate melodies, and a winning groundedness. Sonically there’s echoes of Red House Painters, Archers Of Loaf, and the plenitude of 90s softcore bands, but lyrically it’s eclectic.

It’s about ideas of such everyday frustration and sadness that they’re inexorably drowned out by the theatre of existing. Consequently, these ideas are often diasporic and disjointed, but John Ross – with his plaintive, instinctively catching croon – grounds them with an intoxicating specificity of time, place and character; it’s often stream of consciousness. There’s the disaffection for the deafening, asphyxiating metropolis; and the dichotomy between the insufferable levity of most human interaction, and the concurrent earnest longing for meaningful connection (boy does that strike a note). There’s allusions to death and loss, but articulated with curiosity and acquiescence rather than naked despair and intent. Loneliness and neuroticism pulsates with a primordial constancy, with particular attention paid to the jarring irreconcilability of internal thought aligning with reality. There’s a profound instinctiveness circulating this record.

This is out-of-place, out-of-your-depth music for people who are lonely but aren’t alone, who are happy-I-guess but often feel directionless and overwhelmed. It’s communal and kind and delicately challenging; and its concerns seem slight, until you marginally tilt your head and understand in absolute terms that the everyday concerns are the most substantive.

It’s one of the most thoughtful and rewarding listens of the year so far, and I zealously urge you to give it a go. If you’re indifferent I’ll bake you a cake.

8/10

 

You can listen the record, download, or order it on vinyl here: https://wildpink.bandcamp.com/

– Kieran Devlin