Since The White Stripes stripped everything back and wowed us in the process, there have been a slew of bands doing their guitar and drums thing with varying degrees of success. However, while the likes of Middle Class Rut have taken it to hardcore extremes, there are those taking the format into wholly different directions.
Enter Baltimore, Maryland duo WYE OAK. Named after the tree on their home state’s emblem, guitarist/ vocalist Jenn Wasner and multi-instrumentalist Andy Stack have already made two critically-acclaimed LPS and have come to the attentions of the ever-vigilant City Slang label into the process.
On paper, the WO sound couldn’t be further removed from the apocalyptic hardcore howl of a Middle Class Rut, but the two duos do share one patch of common ground. Listen to either and it’s hard to believe such a racket could be kicked up by merely two people. In Wye Oak’s case, though, they achieve it more by layering sounds and textures. I haven’t seen them live, but apparently Andy Stack plays drums with his feet and right hand, while playing rudimentary bass lines with his left, sometimes triggering samples too. Who says men can’t multi-task, eh?
So it’s fair to say Wye Oak’s intriguing reputation precedes, but can they transfer the excitement to record? ‘Civilian’ – recorded with engineer John Congleton (Shearwater/ St. Vincent) – leaves my jury struggling to return a conclusive verdict.
Overall, the album seems caught uneasily between the linear and the abstract. The opening brace of tracks – ‘Two Small Deaths’ and ‘The Altar’ – hint at a dalliance with shoe-gazing pop, with dreamy textures and Wasner’s sludgy, opiated vocals suggesting the likes of Lush and Slowdive. Unlike Liz Fraser, she does sing actual words as far as I can decipher, but her voice is often swept up in the cascade of the music.
From thereon in, ‘Civilian’ is a rollercoaster ride of successes and well, not exactly failures, but tracks that fall short of hooking you in. Tracks like ‘Hot as Day’ with its’ nagging, fractured guitar figures and the dense, almost Sonic Youth-style pop of ‘Holy Holy’ are amongst the best things here and it’s when they have the nerve to take these kind of real, structured songs head on that Wye Oak really blossom.
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Elsewhere, atmosphere is king, though it produces mixed results. A track like ‘Plains’ works well, with its’ baleful chords and dry, dusty vocals suggesting somewhere as arid as the title before letting loose some REALLY LOUD BITS that quickly succeed in jarring you out of your stupor. They don’t always follow through on the ideas, however. ‘We Were Wealth’, for example, has a resigned feel and faint Velvets echoes, but loses its’ way despite its’ stormy ending. An aborted attempt at Dinosaur Jr-style heaviosity on ‘Dogs Eyes’ also goes pear-shaped and the low-key acoustics of the closing ‘Doubt’ merely sound unfinished, leaving the record to fizzle out without any kind of resolution.
‘Civilian’ has its’ moments. It makes it clear that Wasner and Stack are long on ideas and invention, if a little lacking in the courage of their convictions at times. I’m coming to them cold, so I can’t say whether this record is the quantum leap forward their press blurb stresses; although I get the feeling they may make more sense after I’ve seen them live. Until then, I remain intrigued but a little way short of convinced.
Wye Oak on MySpace
City Slang Records online
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