Wild Pink "ILYSM"
There’s a delicate beauty to Wild Pink’s songwriting. The band’s trademark blend of folk and indie rock has been a constant throughout their discography, a sonic palette catered to placing that aforementioned beauty center stage. Each subsequent release has served to further distill their sound, with 2021’s A Billion Little Lights being the most self-realized version of the band up until this point. And while A Billion Little Lights was a monumental step for the band’s career, it did pose a serious question - where does Wild Pink go next?
ILYSM does not waste any time addressing those concerns. Opener “Cahooting the Multiverse” is a lush and welcoming track that sees the band eschewing their guitar-centric sound in favor of a delicate piano melody that serves as the song’s backbone. In fact, many of the songs here heavily revolve around the piano, with the acoustic guitar taking much more of a backseat. Songs like album standout “Hell is Cold” and the pleading and airy “Hold My Hand” see this formula working extremely naturally for the band, with the latter track containing a stunning feature from none other than Julien Baker.
Much of the front half of ILYSM sees the band maintaining this delicate and atmospheric tone - the only true exception being found in the record’s title track. “ILYSM” is a cinematic foray into post-rock and shoegaze that is lyrically centered around a late-night visit from a ghost. The song treads along steadily atop group vocals exclaiming “I love you so much” until halfway through its six-minute runtime, where it explodes into a reverb-soaked crescendo before collapsing back down and fading away just like the apparition that serves as the track’s muse.
Not all of ILYSM is completely new territory - “St. Beater Camry” and “War on Terror” stand on their own as two of the most beautiful tracks the band has crafted, and “Simple Glyphs” and “See You Better Now” serve as reminders that the staple sound from their past releases has not been abandoned, only expanded upon. These tracks ground the record enough in what is familiar to allow experiments - like the six and a half minute crushing wall of sound that is “Sucking on the Birdshot”.
Alongside all of these career highs come some minor drawbacks. The ambitious nature of these songs leads to an average track length around five minutes, including quite a few that breeze past that threshold. The album’s twelve tracks culminate in a runtime right around an hour, and one that can be a bit demanding on first listen. And while there aren’t any subpar songs on ILYSM, the decision to load the front half of the record with slow songs only applies a microscope to how utterly massive of an album this is. At the end of the day, these gripes pale in comparison to ILYSM’s merits, and they begin to fade out of focus with repeated listens.
ILYSM may very well go down as Wild Pink’s magnum opus - a record that expands on the gorgeous sound that they have mastered over the course of their career. While it is a demanding listen, it is also an extremely cathartic and rewarding one - equal parts delicate and earth-shaking. Where Wild Pink goes from here remains to be seen, but the path ahead is incredibly bright.
7.5/10
