“Blooming Like Hell”: How Wild Pink Fought Catastrophe and Ended Up with the Stellar ILYSM
The post “Blooming Like Hell”: How Wild Pink Fought Catastrophe and Ended Up with the Stellar ILYSM appeared first on Consequence.
It only lasts a fraction of a second: a honk, a hum, a striking something that cracks open Wild Pink’s new album, ILYSM. By the time first track “Cahooting the Multiverse” picks up speed, the audience is off-balance and lurching to catch up.
“That was a keyboard that I stretched out and trashed,” songwriter and vocalist John Ross tells Consequence. “I liked the idea of starting the record, at least this time, with a disorienting sound to get the listener out of the idea that this is going to be strictly guitar rock, or whatever they might think. Starting with some kind of an amorphous sound felt right to me.”
Ross founded Wild Pink in New York in 2015, and the band also boasts bassist Arden Yonkers, drummer Dan Keegan, and Mike Brenner on the pedal steel. They’ve built their audience steadily, release by indelible release. 2021’s A Billion Little Lights caused a big pandemic stir, and ILYSM, out Friday (October 14th), seems poised to move them up a font size on every festival poster. Anything less would be a pity; the album is a towering musical achievement.
It’s also different from their previous works in small but noticeable ways. Just as Wild Pink are becoming a recognizable brand, Ross is determined to expand their sound. “What I wanted to do was make a record that was more experimental than the last one,” he says. “To have jarring moments and parts that feel like they’re not wrapped up in a bow.”
Uncertainty is part of life, though Ross has grappled with more than most. If you’ve read at least one other story about Wild Pink this year, you know that he was diagnosed with cancer in his lymph nodes during the making of ILYSM.
“It is a completely bizarre experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. At some point, you start to feel like you’re just bringing your body in for treatment,” he says. “I feel like I was bringing my body into the hospital to be worked on like it was a car.”
Cancer is part of the story of ILYSM, though it’s not the whole story. “It mostly affected me when it came time to record,” Ross says. He had already planned studio time, and was “debating whether or not I should hit pause on everything, just try to get through what was going on.”
Instead, when he found out that he “had to get more surgery, I went all-in mentally on recording. It was actually quite helpful, you know? And it definitely informed some of the later tunes on the record, lyrically.”
That includes ILYSM standout “Hold My Hand” featuring Julien Baker. Ross wrote the song “right after my first surgery, about lying on the operating table where a member of the surgical team held my hand right before I went under,” he said in a statement.
He sings, “Wherever I go when I go down/ Will you be there when I come around again?” And when Baker joins in on the chorus to sing, “Hold my hand,” the two voices sounds like two arms wrapping you in a hug. Absent the broader context, the song might evoke the feeling of when your parents pulled your sleeping body out of the car and tucked you into bed. But as is, there’s a jagged edge right at the border of the melody. How fragile it feels, how quickly it could all slip away.
Baker is one of a number of high-profile collaborators on ILYSM. Wild Pink also worked with J. Mascis, Ryley Walker, Yasmin Williams, and Samantha Crain, among others. “For me, it’s more and more fun to collaborate with people,” Ross says. “Whereas I think early on in the project, that was not the case. It was very trimmed down and concentrated. And probably after [2018’s] Yoke in the Fur, I started working on songs that were a little more widescreen sound, that could have used fiddles or strings or whatever.”
He says, “With this record, I kind of had a wishlist — like, ‘Oh man, it’d be so cool to do this as a duet with Julian.’ Or like the co-producer Justin Pizzoforatto, he works on all the Dinosaur Jr. records. We talked about J. [Mascis] doing something. It started in a pretty casual way, you know, like, ‘Oh, it’d be cool if this happened.’ They did happen, pretty organically.”
Mascis shreds on “See You Better Now,” though Ross’ lyrics might be even sharper. “When you were young you traced with a sharpie/ The WWF logo in the corner of your TV,” he sings. “Making whole worlds/ From the misheard words/ Of all the songs you loved/ But never bothered to learn.” It’s affectionate and cutting at the same time, leading to the ringing freedom of the chorus: “And now I see you/ See you better now.” Cue the guitar.
When it comes to collaboration, Ross prefers to deliver the demos without instructions or directions. “Working with people of that caliber, that level of talent, there’s nothing for me to say,” he explains. “It was a lot of fun to get the songs away from what they started as. Like, Yasmin Williams wrote a part that was far beyond the scope of what I would have imagined. It’s cool to have the songs completely go in a different direction.”
Williams can be heard on “The Grass Widow in the Grass Window,” a song that opens with the image of a tree covered in mushrooms: “Great big dead elm/ With golden oysters blooming like hell.” It was one of the final songs written for ILYSM, with some of the most personal lyrics. Ross sings, “The bon vivant with cancer had a lot to say/ That from the pram to the pine box/ There’s a whole lot of weight.” Just as you think the song is coming in for a landing, Williams’ guitar sends it soaring.
Like many songwriters before him, Ross has learned that the studio touches that earned him a streaming audience won’t necessarily win them over live. “I love the recording of [A Billion Little Lights‘] ‘Amalfi,’ but playing it live would be tough,” he says of the glittering tune with heavily-processed vocals. “I feel like writing songs that are meant to be performed is probably a good idea.”
This led him to “Simple Glyphs,” a rollicking highway ride with some of the funniest lines on the record. “I wanted to write something that was faster, and more fun to play live,” he says.
Ross sings, “I’m not supposed to be here/ I’m just showing up every day like Cal Ripken Jr.” He talks about “buying drugs right through the chainlink fence,” and feeling, “Braindead, just like turning off a TV set.”
“When I’m writing a record, I’m always kind of correcting course as I go,” he says. “If the last song was pretty quiet, then the next one will be faster. Back and forth.”
The clearest example of this comes in the sequencing of “Hell Is Cold” into “ILYSM.” “Hell Is Cold” starts with wobbling loops and the words, “I used to hear evil voices.” He sings, “The voices carry on/ They echo in my head/ If you were ever wrong/ Then you’ve already forgot.”
“The song ‘Hell Is Cold,’ I had that loop going from the demo. But the way the band came together and found that groove, and the way that song ends, we kind of figured out in real time in the studio,” he says. “Working with this piano player, David Moore, was so fun and exciting. Everything he did was pretty much improvised.”
This cynicism and wobbling uncertainty gives way to the irrepressible joy of the title track. A chorus of voices launches each syllable as its own confetti bomb: “I. Love. You. So Much.”
Here, during the big chugging hook of the title track, is the only place you’ll find those words. The song is called “ILYSM,” the initialism distancing the audience from the sentiment. When Ross pronounces the name of the album, he says, “I-L-Y-S-M.”
Why ILYSM when those aren’t the lyrics? “My wife and I were texting,” Ross recalls. “And I don’t remember who said [“ILYSM”]. But it just kind of stuck.” He didn’t really want to explain further.
The album, too, often holds something back. Ross is less inclined to spell out his meaning than on previous projects, and he keeps dropping “jarring moments” lest we get too comfortable.
“I think there’s a sweet spot for any songwriters when the listener has a feeling about the song, but they can’t articulate exactly what the feeling is,” he says. “Hopefully, that’s the case here.”
Catch Wild Pink on tour; tickets are available via Ticketmaster.
ILYSM Artwork:
“Blooming Like Hell”: How Wild Pink Fought Catastrophe and Ended Up with the Stellar ILYSM
Wren Graves
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