ALBUM REVIEW: ILYSM – Wild Pink
WILD PINK return for their fourth full-length album ILYSM. Released on Royal Mountain Records, this newest addition to their discography is their most emotionally significant release to date. It’s an immersive album in an almost dreamscape style that allows the band’s unfiltered emotion to flow through the listener.
WILD PINK consists of John Ross (vocals/guitar), Dan Keegan (drums) and Arden Yonkers (bass), though this album has a long list of features including J Mascis, Julien Baker, Ryley Walker, Yasmin Williams and Samantha Crain as well as a variety of guest producers. This release has been used as a way to document and reflect on leader John Ross‘ two-year journey with his cancer diagnosis and treatment. Considering that in the UK alone someone is diagnosed with cancer every two minutes, there is a ridiculously large pool of people that could potentially empathise with the story and benefit from the release the music could give them.
This 12-track album gives an otherworldly, ethereal experience that will help anyone escape their reality if only for an hour or so. In a style that could only be described as dreamy acoustic indie rock, these tracks are perfect to listen to as you lay back and just get in your feelings. From beginning to end, the album has a mixture of soothing and entrancing melodies with the occasional tinge of angst – it’s a perfect balance to where it adds emphasis and emotion, but still lets the album stay as an acoustic, more gentle, release.
The tracks themselves are quite lengthy, with ILYSM, Sucking On The Birdshot and The Grass Widow In The Glass Window each surpassing the six-minute mark, while the shortest song on the album Hell Is Cold is just over two and a half minutes which is roughly the industry average at the moment. Surprisingly though, the tracks don’t feel too long at all. In fact, Hell Is Cold actually has a rather sharp and abrupt ending, making it seem like it should have gone on for longer but was cut short. Another track with a blunt ending is See You Better Now and whilst the jarring ending certainly adds a level of impact, they do throw the listener for a loop. It means the next song has started before you’ve even realised that the previous song was supposed to end and it wasn’t just a streaming glitch.
Taking into account the meaning of the album, the mixture of abrupt endings, slow builds and drawn-out tracks can be linked directly to how people feel throughout their cancer journeys which is incredibly clever on WILD PINK‘s part. Other than the endings, most of the songs sound pretty similar, but for an album so entrancing and otherworldly, it works well. If the songs were flitting between rhythms and genres, it wouldn’t be as immersive or as captivating as it ends up being.
It comes as no surprise that the best song off of the album is the title track, ILYSM. Its placement on the tracklisting is perfection. It adds stronger guitar and basslines with a vocal build-up (almost like chants) that works perfectly with the delay/distortion on the main vocals. Overall, ILYSM is the main character of this album and helps the listener to stay engaged instead of zoning out or relegating the release to background music. If acoustic indie rock is what you’re looking for, this album is a belter.
Rating: 8/10
ILYSM is out now via Royal Mountain Records.
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