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When executed skillfully, album cover art should provide a hint as to the character of the music inside. Of course there are countless exceptions \u2013 the all-white cover of The Beatles<\/i> only had embossed lettering and a stamped number. But then that was The Beatles.<\/p>\n
Night Wilds\u2019 All That Should Have Been<\/i> welcomes listeners with a nightmarish and sinister carnivalesque cover image; telegraphing that what lies inside may be shot through with darkness and malevolence. And a quick look at the track sequence suggests that the debut album from this group based in Seattle and Montana is at least loosely conceptual, or built around a narrative of sorts.<\/p>\n
Those clues are helpful, but it\u2019s the music itself that matter. The curtain comes up with the opening track, \u201cThe Curtain.\u201d A spirited accordion backs a carnival barker vocal who comments on the musicianship (\u201cThat sounds like shit,\u201d he exclaims). Imagine a Tim Burton film with a David Lynch vibe, and you\u2019re on the right track. As the sound of large crowd fades in the show begins with \u201cThe show.\u201d More whirligig sounds, a bass synth that sounds like a tube-meets-calliope, and other spooky bits come in.<\/p>\n
But then a more rock-focused arrangement reveals itself, with shredding guitar leads and a thunderous rhythm section that plays faster, faster, faster<\/i>. \u201cMother\u201d is nearly as creepy as the same-titled cut on Pink Floyd\u2019s The Wall<\/em>, with elegiac strings and a tinkling piano. The singer croons in a style that suggests a more mellifluous Alice Cooper or Roger Waters. But it leads into \u201cFear,\u201d which is the aural expression of that very word. Atmospheric with stabbing, faraway guitar textures and pop-out-of-the-closet screaming, it\u2019s a movie for the ears, albeit an unsettling one.<\/p>\n The album continues along these lines; at 17 tracks, All That Should Have Been<\/i> is clearly designed as a mood piece. Night Wilds describe themselves as a \u201cprogressive alt-rock band,\u201d and that label fits as well as any. It\u2019s not until the fifth track, \u201cNew Jerusalem,\u201d that the album delivers a conventional song. And the tune has much in common with The Final Cut<\/i>-era Pink Floyd; how a potential listener might feel about that is up to the individual.<\/p>\n The seething \u201cConfusion\u201d combines a Jefferson Airplane style rhythm to more atmospherics. The most rocking (and accessible)track on the set is also the record\u2019s best: \u201cWhere Do We Go From Here\u201d delivers on the prog side of the band\u2019s self-description, with a complex rhythm, quiet\/loud contrasts and some of the set\u2019s best balladeering. The contemplative \u201cA Long Way from Graceland\u201d features a lead vocal reminiscent of Mark Knopfler.<\/p>\n The demented shouting that punctuates the Watersy vocal of the closing \u201cWhere Do We Go From Here v2\u201d is jarring in the extreme; one supposes it makes sense, but it won\u2019t be most people\u2019s idea of a fun aural experience. A strange and foreboding listening experience, Night Wilds\u2019 debut should find favor with listeners who prefer their music dark, dramatic, doomy and disturbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When executed skillfully, album cover art should provide a hint as to the character of the music inside. Of course there are countless exceptions \u2013 the all-white cover of The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,56,62,65],"tags":[5280],"class_list":["post-26441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-prog","category-rawk","category-review","tag-night-wilds","cat-39-id","cat-49-id","cat-56-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26443,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26441\/revisions\/26443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}