I can’t believe how out of nowhere I discover music that I like by people or groups I haven’t heard of before. The reason I’m surprised is that I hear something, I like it, I look into it, and there’s five albums. How did I miss the last ten years? The answer is always exposure in a busy field, or lack of it. Yesterday I was talking about subscribing to Shindig!, so this isn’t unique to bands that have released records recently. They write about bands I don’t know from the distant past. It seems like there’s a bottomless pit of music I don’t know that I’m going to like, despite the size of The Archive.
The band I discovered today was Wand and their latest album Vertigo (2024). (You already knew that because you saw the pic.) So who are they? They are from LA and are signed in Europe at least to City Slang out of Berlin, as are Jessica Pratt and Sprints, but I have all Jessica Pratt’s albums and have heard of Sprints, how did I miss Wand? I think the answer is that Sprints fit the cool garage rock band tag, and Jessica Pratt the cool moody singer-songwriter tag, Wand don’t quite tick the cool box, but I like them anyway. The singer sounds quite like Thom Yorke and the band is kind of noisy, but the singer’s melodies are, well, melodic. They are atmospheric and edgy at the same time and you get the feeling that the songwriting is important, but they don’t shy away from a jam. So check ’em out, not for all, but some will really like it.
I had José at the record store listen to some of Vertigo today and he immediately liked it. By the way, he considers King Hannah’s Big Swimmer to be the best album of the year so far and the second best to be Beth Gibbons‘ Lives Outgrown. So will Wand make his top list? They might be a band that has just been off the radar and now I at least want to hear their other records – all five of them.
It was a pleasant summer’s day today, lots of tourists, that nice Porto breeze, not too hot and a lovely day for walking around town. I walked through the market late and some of the stalls were already under covers while others were taking advantage of the influx of July tourists. At the top of the steps someone playing the public piano as there often is, but suddenly replaced by a little girl plinking on the higher notes. From there to dinner in front of the screen as the Olympic ceremony began in the rain, no rain here.
Music today has been Wand – Vertigo (2024).