Dream-pop with a wide lens
Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum is no stranger to the DIY aesthetic. Many know him as that guy who recorded a debut album (Gemini, 2010) in the confines of his Virginia Tech dorm room—an album that, ostensibly, made him a star almost overnight. Now Tatum is four studio albums deep into a glistening career, and since Gemini’s success, he has been attempting to distance himself from the college student mindset (and legend) of eight years ago.
Wild Nothing fans should not fear: the DIY aesthetic is alive and well in 2018. If anything, Tatum’s latest release, Indigo, plays like a more refined take on the sensibilities of his past albums. There’s still the dreamlike movement within tracks and across the record as a whole, a slippery ’80s-era sound that hasn’t lost its place in pop music. It’s as if Tatum has one foot firmly planted in the past and one in the technological advancements of 21st-century music making. Such a contradiction has always been a strong feature of Wild Nothing’s sound, but Indigo is by far the most striking of these contradictions: the tracks slide from the dreamy, albeit deep, effects on “Shallow Water,” to the distortion-heavy “Canyon on Fire.” Tatum, as per usual, served as chief songwriter and producer on this record, and the bulk of the tracks on Indigo have a certain flavor that hasn’t changed much across his four LP releases. A sign of his consistent artistry—most definitely—but for those looking for a vastly new sound from this new Wild Nothing, Indigo might fall short of your lofty expectations.
All throughout Indigo, however, there’s a certain level of social commentary delivered from Tatum’s somewhat unique perspective. A redeeming quality to the songs on the record, most tracks seem to cast a wider net than some of Tatum’s past hits. Take album opener “Letting Go” for instance: a song whose music video features one of the more surreal narratives in recent memory, “Letting Go” focuses on the mercurial and fragmented nature of dreams. “What a broken world, but it’s my own,” sings Tatum, and for a moment the tone of the song shifts towards the more personal. The song’s chorus is purposefully vague: ready to be interpreted in whatever ways the listener wants. “Canyon on Fire” is an anti-LA “anthem,” reflecting on the positive and negative traits of a city Tatum has called home for several years now.
“Oscillation” is reportedly influenced by a big Tatum inspiration, The Cure. Another shifting track (Tatum mentions the limitations of “selective memory”), “Oscillation” very much feels like the album’s focal point: complete with a resounding rhythm section and reverb-heavy guitars, the track fits musically and figuratively with the album’s many movement-centric themes.
Other big Tatum influences that appear on this record are Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry (“Wheel of Misfortune”), Dire Straits (“Through Windows”) and, of course, Kate Bush (Tatum’s 2010 cover of Bush’s “Cloudbusting” drew quite a deal of acclaim).
Indigo feels like a logical next step for the Wild Nothing project, and as the artist behind the curtains grows and matures, so too does his music.
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