Five years on, Wild Nothing reenters a crowded market.
Recently the yin and yang of America’s city vs. country identity crisis bubbled up musically into something uglier but Jack Tatum – AKA Wild Nothing – has embraced the effect somewhat in reverse during the run up to the release of Hold, his project’s fifth album.
At some point in the yawning five-year gap between this latest outing and that of its predecessor Indigo (some remaindered tracks from the Indigo sessions premiered as The Laughing Gas EP in 2020) he relocated Los Angeles to Richmond, Virginia, the small city a couple of hundred miles away from Blacksburg where he grew up.
Of the motivation, he’s confessed a weakness for, ‘strip malls and big box stores’, but the other determining factor was the birth of his son, a life event that can often trigger a homing instinct in the best of us.
Tatum addresses part of this guilt on Suburban Solutions, its otherwise gleaming synth pop motifs fronting the subject’s inner angst with lines such as, ‘There’s a small monthly payment, click here to apply/And change that pathetic excuse for what you call a life’.
Change has been prompted however on more than one front: this is Tatum’s first time self-producing since his debut Gemini over a decade ago, and one in which he’s collaborated with other artists such as Becca Mancari, Beach Fossils’ Tommy Davidson and – in keeping with the theme of new-found domesticity – his wife Dana.
Also amongst the guests was Australian vocalist Hatchie, with whom he shares the album’s opener Headlights On. A story about threading the needle when it comes to wilting relationships, its percussive heavy chatter and hard slapped bass display a strength appropriate to the odds-against lyrical core but in what is a constant for this record, deep meaning and any peril are well hidden behind a dreamy veil.
The singer has talked about being able to have it both ways, describing Hold as both working existentially whilst possessing an idealistic manner that is wide eyed and, in places, expectant as a child.
It’s evident that his new responsibilities are important too – and the accompanying uncertainty – closer Pulling Down The Moon (Before You) reflecting honestly, ‘Before you I was so certain I knew everything…’, whilst the almost shadow-free glitz of Dial Tone explores love within the zeroes of ones of an impersonal existence remote from the person at the other end of the app.
There is also some digression musically, diversions which offer relief against the often too saccharine backdrop. When the mood shifts, a different – and more interesting – subtext breathes a little, The Bodybuilder and Prima both hinting at fantasies going bad, the former introspective and skittish, the latter’s pompous 20th century new romantic feel evidently a refugee.
If that captures but doesn’t hold listener attention much beyond the superficial, the curve ball amongst the nod-alongs here is Alex, on which at chorus time an otherwise timid ballad is given plenty of shoegaze heft and then proggy breakdown. As an outlier, it makes the trip at least worthwhile.
One of Hold’s problems is that it’s competing in the most congested of congested markets – Alvaays, Roosevelt, Joywave, you name them, they’re all fellow swimmers in the same dirty great pond – and if contrast is hard to find, then the same applies to long term interest.
Jack Tatum has moved back to his roots, but it’s the numbness, as opposed to the grit, of urban living that has sunk into his musical grain.
And as with anywhere in America, you can get a jumbo size portion of that almost anywhere.