Wild Nothing's dreamy, shoegaze guitar-pop hints at the ineffable. Gemini is awash with starry-eyed synths, crystalline guitars, and fuzzy atmospherics, reimagining a vein of iridescent, wistful, 1980's pop music, where the answers just lead to more questions. Jack Tatum's debut is an understated affair that sulks, seeps, and sears into listeners romance-fueled memories, and the album is a clear indication that he is an unabashed fan of his brooding, mysterious, and melodic forebears, the touchstones that mopey teens of yesteryear listened to and adored (Joy Division, The Cure, The Cocteau Twins, to name just a few).
As an aside, and in the spirit of full disclosure, The D Man is beholden to new wave and many of its permutations. The reasons are deep-seated and likely originate from happy, early years in a lower middle-class neighborhood, listening to the magical (and seemingly exotic) music older brothers brought home. Upon further reflection, and apart from my native affinity for the distinctive sounds of that era (the icy guitars! the evocative keyboards! the vocal deliveries!), social dynamics and musical elements also play into an affection for popular music's reawakening after rock'n'roll's glorious implosion. After twenty-five years of rock music, its excesses, its machismo, its blues-oriented sound, and its culmination in punk, listening to the intelligent artists of the loosely-defined new wave feels like starting over. Like painting with a new brush and new colors. Moreover, these same artists brought long overdue emotions back into the sonic landscape: sadness, melancholy, longing, romance.
Gemini captures all of this sepia-toned nostalgia, and along with the excellent Golden Haze EP, it is a breathtaking demonstration of the elusive genre's experimentation, complexity, and production. Indeed, Wild Nothing's evocative debut is another example of new wavers meaningful contributions to current indie musicians, almost as if the 1960's never happened. And for some, like The D Man, they never did.
No comments:
Post a Comment