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Avg: 3.5 (52 ratings)
- Date Released: November 4, 2008
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Style: Indie Rock
- Label: Jagjaguwar / SC Distribution
Another strong album from Wilderness, albeit one that's very familiar
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We Say...
Wilderness are one of the absolute best post-punk groups around — clear heirs to Public Image Ltd's difficult throne — and on each album, they seem to have awoken from a deep, amnesiac fog. Which is to say that they have essentially made the same very good album three different times, the new (K)No(W)here being the third iteration. We still like Vessel States best, but merely on points. If you love one Wilderness record, you'll love them all.
Their first album, from 2005, set the table for all that was to follow: super deliberate pace, super melodic, frisky bass (so post-punk), guitars that are jagged and jarring and never stop their chiming drone and finally James Johnson’s vocals, which are seemingly without consonants, all of his lines big-vowelled yawps that stretch across measures and notes like angry yawns.
And so it is with (K)No(W)here. "(P)album" stretches things a bit, with a harder stressing of call-and-response vocals, but most of the record corresponds pretty concisely to what we've heard before from Wilderness. There is no "Beautiful Alarms" (from Vessel States, and the song is still their best moment), but there is consistency, there is familiarity. For now, that will suffice. But for album number four — should it happen — we're rooting for some shift, however slight, be it evolution or devolution. Wherever they go, we will follow. -
They Say...
Over the course of Wilderness' career, each album has been a darker entity than the last. Even more downtrodden and more languorous than Vessel States, (k)no(w)here downshifts gears again with half-time drum thumps, longer stretches of time between picked guitar notes, and increasingly simplified basslines. Written for a visual art performance at 2008's Whitney Biennial and conceived as one long, winding musical piece, it's almost as if the band shared a bottle of extra strength cough medicine before this session in order to slow the pace of songs like "(P)ablum" down to such a deliberate crawl. Purple syrup would also explain the trippy vibe of the record, just as it would explain James Johnson's deeply resonant and meandering singing style this time around. Critics were quick to compare his eccentric vocals to David Byrne or John Lydon on the tinnier and post-punkier Wilderness debut, but the strangest thing about his throaty, subhuman attack here is not that he sounds more like a cross between Ian Mckaye and Cher, or that he slurs to the point where trying to pick out his lyrics is like trying to interpret the Swedish Chef, it's that his sluggish, yowling lines are some of his most cathartic ever. He waivers every note with authority, while the rest of the Wilderness (bassist Brian Gossman, drummer William Goode, and guitarist Colin McCann) lull as soothingly as a very loudly amplified band can. It's the exploration of a similar template as their last albums -- Edge-type guitar runs enhanced by delay pedals, hard flicked bass chords, and rattling tom fills -- but this time, it's more spaciously spread and dragged through quicksand. An ambitious exercise of restraint, it's a lumbering beast that's minimal but still feels expansive. Epic, even.
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| 01. |  |
High Nero |
4:56 |
|
| 02. | |
Strand The Test Of Time |
3:44 |
|
| 03. | |
(p)ablum |
3:15 |
|
| 04. | |
Silver Gene |
4:12 |
|
| 05. | |
Own Anything |
2:40 |
|
| 06. | |
Chinese Whisperers |
8:06 |
|
| 07. | |
Soft Cage |
7:39 |
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| 08. | |
<...^...> |
6:49 |
|
08 Total Tracks, 41:21 Total Length
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Credits
- Pete Lyman - Engineer // Pete Lyman - Mixing // Michael A. Harris - Assistant Engineer // Brian Gossman - Group Member // Colin McCann - Group Member
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