Wand, the continuously evolving Los Angeles psych-rock crew, have returned this spring with the new album “Laughing Matter”. Its Radiohead-esque first single “Scarecrow” demonstrated that the band’s continued growth away from the psychedelic riffage of their salad days.
Does Wand ever take a break? Releasing four full length albums and one extended play in just four short years while touring North America and Europe during any downtime, they’re tireless in laying the groundwork for a vital rock n roll future. Wand are proof you don’t have to be an industry toy to sell records – that, with devotion and time, the seeds you plant with intention and care will grow back into the world. Fresh off announcing their addition to select Stereolab dates this summer and finishing up their second jaunt through Europe in the last year, Wand are quick to say: “But wait, there’s more!” Another leg of European dates are now announced. And to celebrate, the band have released a brand new visual element, a flicker show to feed your endless craving.
The meticulously constructed “Thin Air” takes its time to really get going, its percussive ripples of gamelan-inspired guitar gradually building and erupting in fiery bursts. “Don’t you dare turn your back again,” Cory Hanson cries.
Track from “Laughing Matter,” available on 2xLP/CS/CD from Drag City Records Released April 19th, 2019.
Wand’s music lets the soul wander their fifth full-length “Laughing Matter” is another worthy side-by-side . Laughing Matter follows the Los Angeles rock outfit’s sky-high 2017 LP Plum and shapeshifting 2018 EP Perfume. While early releases from these Drag City Records mainstays were characterized by sludgy neo-garage and fuzzy stoner psych, their latest offerings conjure far too much slippery wonder to warrant concise categorization. Wand take risks and thrive on contradiction—their heady guitar embellishments keep you on your toes, and their surreal imagery simultaneously makes you feel insignificant and a pivotal part of the cosmos.
Laughing Matter is a intoxicating listen for a number of reasons. Their often opaque lyrics are a strangely touching and immersive experience, and lead vocalist Cory Hanson delivers them with a benevolence that will allow you to trust fall into his snug, fluttering coo. Wand’s affection for nature is evident, and there’s both a foreboding sense that something is slipping from grasp and a blissful acceptance of its fleeting or cyclical existence. “Rio Grande” captures a grand trek with breathtaking vistas (“Rivers twist like spider’s silk around the stolen land”) and their evocative descriptions are filtered through Hanson’s warm vocal eccentricities. “Lucky’s Sight” is an abstract, sensory collage with one of the record’s most exhilarating outros and most dramatically vivid lines (“a bag of pollinated daydreams smeared across an empty street”).
Amidst reverberating guitars and raining cymbals, “Scarecrow” expresses in the most tragically sublime terms, the plight of a straw-filled scarecrow standing guard in a field of grain as the scarecrow falls victim to the very crows it’s meant to spook. “Walkie Talkie” sees Wand at their sunniest peak as Hanson sings about the blurring of senses, “I’m kissed by the sight and I’m struck by the sound / My heart blinks like a light as I hitch into town.”
The outro is another highlight with booming, coiled drums and Hanson’s enchanting backing vocals that weave in and out of the foreground. “High Planes Drifter” recalls the compassionate acoustics of Hanson’s solo effort The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo, if you swapped heavenly strings for intergalactic synths, and the instrumental “Hare” gently bubbles below the surface with pirouetting keys and eerie violin screeches. “Wonder” may be the record’s finest offering with its juxtaposition of ballsy, overdriven guitars and sweet, blissful vocal melodies.
The first disc of this double album release is more immediately gratifying, in part because of the track lengths on the second. You might find songs like “Evening Star,” “Airplane” and “Lucky’s Sight” a bit lengthy or decadent after a few listens, but the more you return to these longer cuts, the more melodic Easter eggs you’ll uncover.
Side two opens with the sound of instruments aimlessly plucking as if they’ve just plugged in and tuned up following the album’s implied intermission, and the eventual meandering piano lines and propulsive guitars create a paradoxical tornado of immense sonic weight. Tracks like “xoxo” and “Airplane” exhibit how quickly and smoothly Wand can transition from chill soundscapes to blustery musical tangents. Their extended, contorted guitar jams range from prog to kraut to psych, their keyboards are both familiar yet elusive and their percussion swings from machine-like to completely off-the-cuff. Keyboardist Sofia Arreguin’s occasional lead and backing vocals are straightforward yet consolatory, and drummer Evan Burrows’ candid, Lou Reed-indebted vocals on “Jennifer’s Gone” enhance the frank, depressing quality of the track’s mourning lines.
ThroughoutLaughing Matter, Hanson and Burrows’ lyrics take everything known about defined forms and senses and turn them on their head—sounds can be swallowed, the future’s neck can be cut and life can eat into life—and the album’s improvisational jams, winding outros and emotionally crushing melodies result in perhaps Wand’s most realized release yet.
Wand’s last two releases, 2017’s Plum and 2018’s Perfume EP, meshed Cory Hanson’s touching, beautiful melodies with ramping psych riffs. The Drag City Records psych-leaning five-piece is set to release their latest full-length, Laughing Matter, on April 19th and they made an appearance at Hotel Vegas for the Levitation showcase. Playing lots of new material, Hanson and co. brought zigzagging guitar jams (sometimes with a violin bow in hand) and melodies with an alluring, warm purity. Hanson’s delicate psych croon and wintery backing vocals from keyboardist Sofia Arreguin sounded sublime when paired together, and the Los Angeles-based Wand proved to be a charming, soothing oasis from much of the freakier psych rock acts on the bill.
Laughing Matter offers bits of fuzzy parable, travel diary, pep talk and lullaby, amid a joyous, eclectic sense of pastiche and ascendant choruses. Wand form new music from the ashes of a world that can no longer suffer its human abusers, to inspire us to hold the spirit close and do what’s next.
For a sample of these new reaches in the Wand-iverse, look no further than the track “Walkie Talkie”, the third pre-release single and latest video from Laughing Matter! Lookin’ like it might’ve beamed in directly from sideways post-punk pastward futures, “Walkie Talkie” shines brightly with the reflective sheen of Wand’s modern flicker. Muted neon colors swallow seething imagery as Lee Landey and Evan Burrows‘ emphatic rhythm section slams into Cory Hanson and Robbie Cody‘s screaming guitars, whilst Sofia Arrequin‘s warped Morse keyboards sew the song together at the edges. “Walkie Talkie” is a wheelhouse Wand jammer, a barely-contained swarm of alien and uncanny tones driven to the maximal edge.
Track from the Wand album “Laughing Matter,” available on 2xLP/CS/CD from Drag City on April 19th, 2019.
Swerving between out-of-focus parable, travel diary, pep talk, polemic, love song, and lullabye, Wand’s forthcoming long-player Laughing Matter has its eyes on a lot of prizes. With lyrical and musical shades varying between Wand’s darkest nights and most pastoral days, there’s a nuanced, eclectic emotional scope onLaughing Matter that’s not been quite so nakedly apparent on any previous Wand release.
Their second single from the forthcoming release is “Thin Air,” which demonstrates their evolving desires to break every convention they encounter, to joyously recombine the fragments of formerly familiar territory. The radical approaches in “Thin Air” are buoyed by Wand‘s autodidact enthusiams, as DIY impulses create a delirious cascade of molten guitars and a twinkling of keys. With our institutions crashing all around us, “Thin Air” offers a departure from the decadent mindlessness of the mundane for the electricity-free hills above the town. Gamelan guitars roll into to an arena-worthy chorus: “don’t you dare turn your back again”. Take this directive to heart and heed to Wand’s command, put your hands to the wheel and let go.
Los Angeles psych-rockers Wand have announced the follow-up to their 2017 album Plum and 2018 EP Perfume. Their new album, Laughing Matter, will be released on April 19th via Drag City Records, they’ve shared the first single, “Scarecrow,” with an accompanying video directed by Gordon De Los Santos.
“Scarecrow” picks up where the understated psychedelics of Perfume left off with its rippling guitar line, downtempo rhythms, sparse piano and frontman Cory Hanson’s benevolent coo. Wand have always excelled at pretty, somber ballads, so if they decide to fill out the rest of their LP with a similarly quiet and majestic take on their transcendent sound, it should make for a soothing listen.
According to their Bandcamp page, “Laughing Matter offers bits of fuzzy parable, travel diary, pep talk and lullaby, amid a joyous, eclectic sense of pastiche and ascendant choruses. Wand form new music from the ashes of a world that can no longer suffer its human abusers, to inspire us to hold the spirit close and do what’s next.”
Listen to “Scarecrow” check out the Laughing Matter album artwork . You can preorder Laughing Matter on double LP, CD, cassette or MP3 via Drag City Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 