If there is a piercing intensity to Lifer – the latest to surface from Wye Oak’s forthcoming The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs full-length – then it’s because it was, according to Jenn Wasner, entirely integral to her learning ‘to accept and be grateful for the gifts [she has] been given.’ Disclosed in an essay that’s as moving, visceral and downright wonderful to read as she and Andy Stack’s music is to ensconce oneself within, in flowing prose, she cites a sea change in terms of her ‘attempts to align [her] internal beliefs with [her] behavio[u]r,’ coming to terms with ‘extreme gratitude’ in place of an ‘overwhelming, soul-twisting guilt’ elicited by the ‘luck’ she feels she’s experienced. And the resulting song is – all necessarily inspiriting vocal, Feistian, cascading guitars, and expressive rhythmic parts – as firmly self-affirming as any number of afternoons spent glued to Adriene Mishler’s sedative YouTube missives. (“I’ve shown you everything I am/ You choose or not to understand,” Wasner remarks with crystalline transparency prior to an almost exorcistic solo, for example.) A revelation in every sense of the word.
The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs is available from April 6th via Merge Records, while Wye Oak play Village Underground on May 3rd.