Intricate and Deliberate
Four years is apparently just the right amount of time for a new Archie Bronson Outfit album to show up and make you remember the band’s strengths while opening yourself to a host of new influences and charm. Just as the long wait from Derdang Derdang in 2006 brought about the critically acclaimed Coconut, Wild Crush carries that tradition of pushing Archie Bronson Outfit to the brink.
Opener “Two Doves on a Lake” represents all you need to know about the group, where new bassist Kristian Robinson commandeers the sheer roots of the band. Robinson’s airy, bouncy bass lines lend credence to Wild Crush‘s muddled garage rock and blues hues, a style felt most prominently on single “We Are Floating.” Its video, a hodgepodge of cascading illustrations juxtaposed with the trio rocking out in grayscale, could easily stretch out into the rest of the album. Waterfalls of color would make for a great accompaniment of most tracks, particularly the slightly downtempo “Love to Pin You Down.” Frontman Sam Windett waxes poetically on the push and pull of relationships as the song breaks from ballad into accompanying waltz, the meandering “Lori From the Outer Reaches.”
Mid-album, the band veers off into tinges of psychedelia and “Lori From the Outer Reaches” pulls from the trippier and more subtle elements of the genre. The occasional wail of a horn and cascading cadence turns the track from simple to surprisingly expansive. “Cluster Up and Hover” returns the band to its garage rock fever pitch, instantly recalling Neil Young and Crazy Horse jam-out goodness, its intro echoing the chunky fragments of the album’s closer, “Country Miles.” Only when the synth of that song fades away does the larger scope of the album becomes apparent. It’s as if you’ve panned out from the fine details of a mosaic only to find that every misshapen stone is exactly where it should be.
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