Videos

WYE OAK share 2nd track from new album

• 22nd Feb 2018

Following last week’s stunning video, Wye Oak have shared a second taste of new album ‘The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs’, which is set for release on April 6th via Merge Records.

During the intoxicating new single “It Was Not Natural,” a weary walk through the woods unearths a discarded antler, a talisman that provokes deep questions about our work lives, social codes, and romantic mores. The music—a sophisticated tessellation of pounded piano and loping bass, scattered drums and chirping synthesizer—is as complex and ponderous as these issues themselves. “It Was Not Natural” sees the duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack navigating life’s difficulties with the nuance and power they demand.

Wasner offers the following: “This is a story about finding an object of uncertain origin whilst walking through the woods. Or, if you’d rather: it’s about exploring the space between the things that we are socialized to believe about ourselves, and the actual truth of our nature—learning how to push the limits of the systems we’ve put in place to help ourselves make sense of chaos.”

For ‘The Louder…’, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack flew to one another’s cities—she in Durham, North Carolina, he in Marfa, Texas—for a week or so at a time, hunkering in home studios to sort through and combine their separate song sketches. These shorter stints together produced less second-guessing and hesitation in their process, yielding an unabashed and unapologetic Wye Oak. They discarded past rules about how to write a record, instead funnelling all those experiences and experiments into perfectly unified statements.

The result is some of the biggest, broadest and boldest music Wye Oak has ever made. ‘The Louder…’ pursues a litany of modern malaises, each of its dozen tracks diligently addressing a new conflict and pinning it against walls of sound, with the song’s subject and shape inextricably and ingeniously linked. It arrives at a time of immense doubt when our personal problems are infinitely compounded by a world that seems in existential peril. But these songs answer the challenge by radiating self-reflection and resolve, wielding hooks and musical intricacy as a shield against the madness of the moment.

‘The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs’ will be out worldwide on April 6; pre-orders are available today on CD and “sand & sky” (opaque beige & translucent blue) Peak Vinyl in the Merge store with an optional exclusive t-shirt bundle. The album is also available to pre-order via these participating independent record shops or from these digital providers.

‘The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs’ tracklist:
1. (tuning)
2. The Instrument
3. The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs (YouTube)
4. Lifer
5. It Was Not Natural (YouTube)
6. Symmetry
7. My Signal
8. Say Hello
9. Over and Over
10. You Of All People
11. Join
12. I Knot It’s Real

Wye Oak on tour:
Mar 12 Austin, TX – SXSW
Mar 13 Austin, TX – SXSW
Mar 14 Austin, TX – SXSW
Mar 15 Austin, TX – SXSW
Apr 06 Iowa City, IA – Mission Creek Festival
Apr 20 Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso Noord
Apr 21 Rotterdam, NL – Motel Mozaique Festival
Apr 22 Luxembourg, LU – De Gudde Wellen
Apr 25 Berlin, DE – BiNuu
Apr 26 Prague, CZ – MeetFactory
Apr 27 Vienna, AT – Fluc
Apr 29 Zurich, CH – Bogen F
May 01 Brussels, BE – Les Nuits Botanique @ Rotonde
May 02 Paris, FR – Le Pop Up
May 03 London, UK – Village Underground
May 04 Manchester, UK – The Deaf Institute
May 05 Liverpool, UK – Liverpool Sound City
May 06 Dublin, IE – Whelan’s
May 09 Asheville, NC – Grey Eagle
May 10 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
May 11 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
May 13 Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
May 14 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
May 15 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
May 17 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
May 18 Milwaukee, WI – The Back Room at Colectivo
May 19 St. Paul, MN – Turf Club
May 20 Omaha, NE – The Waiting Room
May 21 Kansas City, MO – Record Bar
May 23 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
May 25 St. Louis, MO – Ready Room
May 26 Louisville, KY – Zanzabar
Jul 11 Salt Lake City, UT – Metro Music Hall
Jul 13 Portland, OR – Revolution Hall
Jul 14 Vancouver, BC – The Biltmore Cabaret
Jul 15 Seattle, WA – Neumos
Jul 17 San Francisco, CA – The Independent
Jul 18 Oakland, CA – Starline Social Club
Jul 19 Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
Jul 20 San Diego, CA – Soda Bar
Jul 21 Phoenix, AZ – The Crescent Ballroom
Jul 23 Santa Fe, NM – Meow Wolf
Jul 24 El Paso, TX – Lowbrow Palace
Jul 27 Birmingham, AL – Saturn