We are all, pretty much, through and through apprehension. It's worked into the fibers of our muscles. It's what makes our meat so tough. It's what puts the knots into the balls of our calves. It's what keeps us staring at more 4 o'clock in the morning darkness, with a television on and a restless jumble of spaghetti thought in our heads than we'd ever hope for. We aren't sure about anything and dammit if that doesn't make us all a whole lot insane. It's all speculation and uncertainty. We're all just chickens running around with blood spurting from our necks, heads lopped off. It's all just aimless crashing and it's scrambled us into very interesting and sweaty globs. Then comes along Jack Tatum, the man behind the Blacksburg, Virginia, experimental pop project Wild Nothing. Well, you realize that your hypothesis is still pretty sound, but there are ways around it really getting out-of-hand and most of that is tied to how often you creak the door open on its hinges and pad down the hallway, out of your room, to see what the weather's like outside, to venture out and mingle a little bit with the other headless and all wounded heart. Most of Wild Nothing's debut album, "Gemini," comes off as the fluctuating tangents of a dreamer, though there's always a cohesive vein and it's that there's no room for error. The characters are familiar with what hurts and what doesn't, what works and what bombs and they stay as close to the vest as they can be without remaining completely shuttered. The song, "Live In Dreams," is something like soul of Tatum's mindset. He sings:
Sitting on the cigarette butt front porch
I could ask you, "Are you dead like me?"
Call me what you will, but call me again
It's true I don't talk too much
Because our lips won't last forever
And that's exactly why
I'd rather live in dreams and I'd rather die
Because our lips won't last forever
And that's exactly why
I'd rather live in dreams and I'd rather die
There's a feeling of living not only in those dreams, but also living on in the ether, wishing for the path of least resistance. If there's a noise in the house -- that amplified bump in the night -- there's going to be no seeking out the source of that noise. It will go away on it's own. It's probably just the cat waking up and getting hyper on its nocturnal urges. It will be fine. We'll be fine with our covers and our music and books. Wild Nothing music is like an absurdly long hallway that we're walking down, in our bed clothes, with a candle in hand, flickering and lighting the way. It cuts through the blackness and yet we keep following it, quietly, persistently.