photo by Lucy Johnston
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Each and every Friday we offer songs by local artists. Today’s selection, featured on the Afternoon Show with Kevin Cole, is “Golden Haze” by Wild Nothing from the 2010 Golden Haze EP on Captured Tracks.
Wild Nothing started as a one-man-band, the solo-project of Jack Tatum, a character from Blackburg, Virginia, whose music is inspired almost entirely by great nostalgic dream-pop/shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins. His debut full-length album, Gemini, released this past spring on Captured Tracks (recorded and performed solely by Tatum), is full of dreamy, carefree synth-pop and has captured the imaginations of many, KEXP listeners most definitely included. Golden Haze is Tatum’s amazing follow-up EP and a step forward in the progression of his dreamy shoegaze pop . If you haven’t heard this previous work, the wistfully lo-fi lead track “Golden Haze” is a song with melodies that should leave you instantly hooked. And the album just gets better from there. Fans of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Cure, and The Smiths should give this new EP a good listen; it just might make you think twice about what you’ve been listening to lately. At a time when many bands are looking forward, sometimes it’s refreshing to hear a band wanting to re-create the past.
Wild Nothing is scheduled for a lengthy Spring tour with Abe Vigoda. You can find all the tour dates and listen to additional tracks on their Myspace page. They will be performing in Seattle at Cairo on February 27, and live on KEXP that same day. For now, here’s an older video of them performing “Summer Holiday” live -- it’s dark, filmed at not a particularly great angle, but the vibe feels right:
