Pitchfork

Every few years, there's a trend among bandnames, a recurring word or theme that hits the underground's collective consciousness like a slap on the forehead, only to saturate record shelves and concert bills to the point of parody. For British alternapop groups in the early 90s, Jesus saved, while those bearing giddy power-pop later in the decade were invariably dubbed "super." Lately, there's been an influx of repetition (Xiu Xiu, Man Man, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and "black" bands (Black Dice, Black Keys, Black Eyes, Black Mountain), but increasingly, groups find themselves indebted to creatures of nature (Gorillaz, Deerhoof, Doves, Caribou, Pelican), and particularly wolves. So in a period during which the animal kingdom permeates the independent aesthetic, it's hard not to admire the band that takes a big-picture approach: Welcome to the Wilderness.

Formed three years ago in Baltimore, a city increasingly known for its thriving club music community, the art-rock four-piece builds off the history of pre-adolescent post-rock-- not the academic jazz-inflected instrumentals or orchestral crescendos associated with the genre today, but rather post-rock as defined in the early 90s by music journalist Simon Reynolds, a scene in which bands like Talk Talk, Bark Psychosis, and Disco Inferno applied guitars more for their aqueous, saturated textures and tones than for rigid pop structures.

Like those bands, Wilderness deploy spacial, dream-like atmospheres and ominous ethereality over cymbals that shimmer and splash against tom-heavy drum patterns. Brooding, artstruck guitars ring out from the depths, echoing the swirling neo-psych of Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. But when frontman James Johnson breaks like headlights through the mist, the picture shifts from bliss-out watercolor to black-streaked oil canvas: Channeling the primal weirdness of a young David Byrne, or the unhinged proclamations of Public Image Ltd's John Lydon, his words are more announced than sung, and like a number of Eno-era Talking Heads tracks, he often relies on distinctive sing/speak cadences in lieu of tightly structured vocal melodies.

Rising, falling, and lifting again, Johnson's silvery howl rides the band's iridescent, rainswept instrumentation like a cresting tide, obscuring lyrics that alternate between abstract expressionism and fatalistic, anti-political rhetoric. It's a fantastic technique, but also a risky one: On cursory listens, many listeners could find the album beautifully lush-- even pioneering-- yet still be somewhat put off by the seeming atonality of Johnson's unusual style. But that's where the pleasant surprise lies: As these songs begin to settle in deeper, his vocal topography unexpectedly yields tons of melody where there initially may have seemed to be very little.

Kicking in with an authoritative snare, a pause, and an explosive combination of smashed cymbal, walking bass, and stratospheric guitarwork, "Marginal Over" brightly broadcasts Wilderness' arrival, but it doesn't take long for things to turn darker: The doom-stricken "Arkless" lies at the heels of the opener, and just around the corner from that is one of the album's greatest-- and gravest-- standouts, the urgent, desolate "End of Freedom", which finds Johnson at his most animated and desperate, insistently commanding "the hand over the fist." Later, in "Fly Further to See", the band ascends from the murk, emerging with triumph and radiant guitar lines, before closing out the record with the experimental solo piano piece "Mirrored Palm".

Of course, while Wilderness are certainly unique, and prove themselves dynamic within their own strict parameters, a bit more variety wouldn't hurt, nor would more of the kind of melodic infusion found at the apex of "End of Freedom". But considering the original sound they've created-- and at such an early stage of their career-- it's difficult to find too much fault: Even given this level of sonic consistency, the album only drags once, briefly, during the eight-minute centerpiece "Post Plethoric Rhetoric"-- and that's at the beginning, before the track manages to get fully off the ground.

What Wilderness really seem to signify-- and what makes them important-- is a shift back towards the more cerebral end of the rock spectrum. Every extreme has its antidote, and just as it's been rewarding to see artists loosen up, enjoy themselves, and have some fun for once, it's also refreshing to hear them aspiring, just as passionately, to music of a more serious persuasion. In an environment that's reveled so long in the comfortability of tradition and flavor-of-the-month transitiveness, this kind of substantive art-rock is ripe for exploration. If Wilderness aren't quite kings of the mountain yet, it might just be that few others have yet traversed their fertile domain.

 

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