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festival MUSIC
WYE OAK Baltimore band return with swooning, expansive album and Fringe gig For more info go to LIST.CO.UK /FESTIVAL
The i rst time Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak visited Edinburgh she was, in her own words, ‘an idiot high-schooler on a very clichéd backpacking trip through Europe’. She returns in August with Wye Oak, responsible for one of the year’s most critically acclaimed albums in The Harder I Call, The Faster It Comes. ‘When you’ve been a band as long as we have,’ she says, ‘it’s nice to hear that people who aren’t familiar with us are i nding out about it.’
For the i rst time ever, the group (formed by Wasner and drummer Andy Stack in Baltimore) are touring with a third member, Will Hackney, tasked with bringing the additional keys and samples from the new record onto the stage. ‘We’re all multi-tasking pretty hard as it is,’ says Wasner, ‘so it’s not like a three-piece band is a huge ensemble but it feels like it to us!’
While making The Harder I Call, The Faster It Comes, the duo made the decision not to consider the live performance
element, working on the album i rst and foremost. The result is a swooning, expansive collection that recalls Cocteau Twins (on ‘It Was Not Natural’) and St Vincent (on ‘Symmetry’), but has its own unmistakeable identity. Wasner remains a skilful lyricist of great intelligence, something particularly evident on album highlight ‘Lifer’, which juxtaposes her own struggles as a creative person against a real life-or-death scenario. Sometimes giving up isn’t an option. Songwriting is an integral
part of Wasner’s identity, the way she makes sense of the world, her ‘fear and apprehension about the future’ and ‘intense grief about the avoidable suffering of people’. Despite the logistical and i nancial difi culties of being in a band in 2018, there’s only one thing for it. ‘I know that I’ll be making music in some form until my dying breath,’ she says, ‘because it’s my only real joy and passion in life.’ (Craig Angus) ■ Summerhall, 21 Aug, 7pm, £14.50.
15–27 Aug 2018 THE LIST FESTIVAL 73