June 21st, 2011 1:00am
I Want To Feel At Home
I'm sure this will come across as a pithy, dismissive joke to some people, but I like WU LYF because they sound like a caveman version of U2. Both bands lean hard on delay, grand gestures and the implication of a vast, wide open space, but WU LYF's style is primitive and aggressive. Ellery Roberts howls like a maniac, his words are incomprehensible but his emotions are naked and blunt. The album version of "Heavy Pop" begins with the sound of piano chords echoing through empty space, but once that passage is through, it's all wailing and smashing. It's raw and intense, but not formless. The vocals and percussion are balanced out by the delicate, pretty sound of the guitar, which shifts through the piece -- changing direction at one point, or seeming to lift up when the singer sounds as if he's collapsed in exhaustion.
4 Responses.
6/21/11 3:49 pm
This is awesome !!! The voice is Amazing ! : o
6/22/11 4:43 pm
I am a big fan of these guys. I think they are only going to get better and we are finally starting to learn a little bit about them which is always nice.
6/22/11 11:54 pm
Psyched to see this band get some coverage. The album is really well done, and I really like what they did to the old songs (heavy pop, concrete gold, cave song) as they all got rerecorded but for the better.
I’m dragging myself crosscountry for their NY dates and only hope the album does well enough where maybe they come back at some point; UK bands with good albums can get a brutal lack of traction here (Johnny Foreigner, Late of the Pier, and Sky Larkin to name a few)
6/23/11 1:01 am
Thanks for this. Enjoyed it yesterday enough to buy the album. Then saw it reviewed on PFork just now and was interested to read Ian’s take. The mentions of Modest Mouse, Wolf Parade, and Explosions in the Sky all make sense. But for Ian to say that Ellery Roberts’ vocals evade facile comparison, I don’t get. The timbre is different, sure, but the throaty rasp, chant-ish growl is all James Johnson from Wilderness.
And the Wilderness comparison goes further, too, into the band’s overall sound. WU LYF sound more like Wilderness than they do any of the band’s above. But that’s ok, because Wilderness are pretty great, and haven’t made a record in a few years.
So anyway, this is a pretty great record. I had entirely skipped over this band, I guess, because it didn’t seem familiar even yesterday when I saw the name on here. And honestly I had to read your first couple of sentences before deciding to even listen. In my mind when I read the name, I had some thoughts about Wu-Tang and then Lyfe Jennings, which is not at all what I was in the mood for hearing.