Wye Oak – Civilian

Wye Oak are Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack. Hailing from Baltimore, this duo play an earnest sort of folk-influenced rock, with touches of noise and dream pop found scattered between the lines. Although hardly a debut, Civilian is in fact their 3^rd release, this album, the title track particularly, was my first exposure to the band. The journey from hearing the last minute of this song on the radio to embracing the album was a long and somewhat arduous one.

The song ‘Civilian’ grabbed me instantly. Rich and soulful, even rambling, the song moves along nicely, right on the rails. Then there’s the rub. As with all great fiction, a twist stirs the song into a great piece, derailing the direction the track seemed to be going in with a great satisfaction. Drums come from behind muted guitar notes and then erupt into a stomping verse, almost like a reprise of the opening. Wailing, tapped guitar bursts in and really steals the show, showing this band can not only ponder and write catchy verses but rock out in equal measures.

Despite my instant warmth towards the track, the album laid dormant on my hard drive for weeks. Briefly showing its face every time I glanced at my ‘recently added’, or left the W section of my iTunes playing, recklessly. It’s an album I avoided, even dodged. I don’t know why, there is no stigma with female ‘frontmen’, maybe the title track of the album being the first I heard lead me to believe I’d experienced the best? But when I finally plugged into the album, let it have its wicked way with me, I was ensnared, asking ‘Wye didn’t I listen to this sooner!?’ (…I know)

The album opens with ‘Two Small Deaths’ a song that just goes and goes and goes. I get the feeling that if it was 12 minutes long it’d still feel like it was expanding, growing. The delicate changes of tone between the verse and chorus are a great example of the albums dream pop qualities. Next up is ‘The Alter’, a song that claims ‘our nature is at fault / so cut it at the source’. Its reflective lyrics team with shuddering bass before fuzzing out into the shimmering clangy guitars of ‘Holy Holy’. Going from shuddering to shimmering successfully is no mean feat. The guitars constantly build and fade, yet another compliment I can play this album is that they know when to end a song. Nothing gets stale or repetitive.

‘Dogs Eyes’ soon stapled itself to my favourites list. Starting off with a guitar loop straight from the 80s, Wasner soon envelopes the song in a startling sludgy riff. In come the big drums, sounding like they were recorded in the core of the earth, yet just as the song threatens to go into meltdown they show surprising restraint to bring it down, cool it off. Later, distortion warns you that the riff is coming back in, but it hits twice as hard, crashing in on your ears like your head is inside their amp. ‘Plains’ later on the album pulls a similar trick, it is a sullen song that marches slowly before suddenly erupting into a wall of sound that concludes before you know it, returning to the trudge.

Civilian as an album is actually quite astonishing. It swims on the border between the beautiful and the destructive, delving into each with consummate ease. It’s an album you really have to jump into, much as the album art depicts.