This month, Wye Oak surprise-released a new sorta-album called Tween. It’s been two years since their last LP — the underrated and beautiful Shriek, but this isn’t the official next record from Wye Oak, exactly. It isn’t billed as Album #5. It is eight previously unreleased songs, revisited from the transitional and searching time that elapsed between Civilian and Shriek, while also being inextricably linked to both. It’s an album that steps sideways and backward and maybe forward, making it the latest weird entry into what has become Wye Oak’s weird trajectory.
As a successor to Civilian, Shriek was lost somewhere in-between all of this. It was in the mold of the stylistic leap and it was the much-anticipated album that seemingly should’ve ignited more fervor around the group, yet didn’t. The thing that doesn’t make sense here is that Shriek was so well-received; it wasn’t a botched attempt at the stylistic left-turn breakthrough-followup. It just wound up being, well, a quieter release than the one for which the duo seemed primed. A not-insignificant part of this is that Wye Oak’s decision to aggressively ditch their guitar-oriented sound for a synth-y, groove-focused album left some fans and critics scratching their heads. Strange as it seems in the ’10s to be hung up on a rock-oriented band experimenting with a more electronic sound, there was some degree of validity to it. In the perennial conversation about “guitar music being over” or whatever, Wye Oak were a beacon of hope, a band that were wresting raw and vital emotions out of an instrument and form that many would write off as being tapped-out. Even so, Shriek wasn’t some gimmick or willful negation of what the duo had achieved on their first few albums. It was a necessary overhaul in which Wasner and Stack reworked their approach from the ground up,
So, in several ways, that’s where Tween comes in. It’s the type of counter-narrative whisper of a release that you can get away with more easily when you aren’t saddled with the pressure of having ascended to the peak of the indie world, the point at which each of your records has the weight of being the Next Big Statement from your band. And it’s a release that elucidates what went on behind the scenes of the seemingly abrupt, sharp left-turn that occurred between Civilian and Shriek, while also suggesting what Wye Oak could be now that Shriek has rearranged the borders.
It all culminates with the stunning closer “Watching The Waiting” — Tween’s surefire, immediate entry if you were to make a list of Wye Oak’s finest songs. “Watching The Waiting” doesn’t sound quite like anything else in Wye Oak’s catalog. It has a breakneck momentum not unlike past songs, but a less burdened one; it’s brighter and sprightlier than the heavy churn of The Knot and Civilian. Some of the dreaminess of “Shriek” and “Schools Of Eyes” is in there, but it lifts off in a different way. The song’s more organic than Shriek, but its drama is primarily driven by the interplay of Wasner’s vocals and a lead synth line that waits to peel open into a wailing solo just short of the two minute mark. Much of Wye Oak’s pre-Shriek work felt like something mysterious and foreboding and brooding lurking in darkened forest corners. This returns to a more pastoral quality, but instead sounds like mystic visions at daybreak. If Tween is a document of an era of transition that also hints at what the new Wye Oak could explore, then “Watching The Waiting” is hopefully the promising preview of what’s to come.
From the album Tween, out now digitally on Merge Records. Vinyl / CD out August 5th.
The Fat Angel Sings 