After making the “Waiting Around” EP with multi-instrumentalist Laura Wolf as Lilts last year, John Ross returned to his main project, Wild Pink, and signed with Fire Talk Records in early 2024. To celebrate, they released the three-song EP Strawberry Eraser, and christened the accomplishment with “Air Drumming Fix You,” a pairing of diner jukebox-gentle drum machines and synthesizers with cresting saxophone scales and a spumante pedal steel—all while Ross sings about “shitting my pants in a VR world,” “baby breath” and someone, as the title aptly suggests, air-drumming Coldplay’s “Fix You.” Through vignettes of quick humour, however, come sharp lines that’ll gut you on the spot. “I guess the good life didn’t look like you thought it might” is going to be a lyric that sticks with me for a good while, especially, maybe forever. Too, “Unconscious Pilot” is another reverb-heavy slice of alt-folk that mangles itself into sublime, bulky distortion. It’s not as melodic as “Air Drumming Fix You,” but it doesn’t need to be—the fortune is all in the gloomy chords and cavernous singing from Ross. “What if the soul is real?” he ponders. “And it gets lost on the way to the next deal? What a nightmare, knowing you’re out there dead and scared and there ain’t a thing I can do.” Most of us didn’t know that an all-time great record like “Dulling the Horns” was on the horizon, but it was nice to live in “Strawberry Eraser” for a while—letting ourselves be enraptured by fluttering saxophones and weighty guitars, as if a jazz ensemble accidentally stumbled into a noise-band’s rehearsal. It all culminates in a storm of flanged strumming, as John Ross declares: “I hope it’s nothing.”
Though Wild Pink are known for their collaborations — among which include Julien Baker, Ryley Walker, Jasmin WIlliams, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner, and J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr.— “Strawberry Eraser”, a new EP and first for Fire Talk showcases Ross unadorned and singular, reinforcing him as “a truly gifted songwriter, one able to contain vast vistas within single songs” (Under the Radar). With spaced-out synths and saxophone, it conjures open and unexplored terrains, a natural extension of Wild Pink’s “vast and swooning” (The FADER) sound.
released March 21, 2024
The Fat Angel Sings 