Wild Pink – Dulling The Horns

Heartland Rock | Garage Rock | Americana

64%

 

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. After pondering on Dulling The Horns for some time, that adage is the predominant feeling which the album leaves me with. Though I’ve enjoyed all of Wild Pink’s records thus far and regularly return to them, I’ve still often felt like the band lacked a clear identity. I’d be quick to recommend them to anyone in search of some indie adjacent Americana. I’d often affectionately label them as “the poor man’s War On Drugs”. But therein lay the problem; I couldn’t envision myself recommending something as “sounding like Wild Pink”, purely on the basis that they’d never be my primary source of comparison. While the band have a sound that ticked a multitude of boxes for me, they never did so in a way that felt unique. 

Dulling The Horns is a different beast to the albums that came before it – especially when compared to the eclectic hairpin turns of ILYSM. This latest effort is far more raw and stripped back. The empty spaces that would typically be filled with shimmering synths or the warm swell of steel guitar, are instead either left intentionally empty or are occupied by rough and ready guitar fuzz. There are absolutely moments where this new philosophy pays off. ‘Sprinter Brain’ and ‘St. Catherine St.’ in particular use this shift in sound to the fullest and end up being by far the album’s strongest tracks. The former delivers a phenomenal driving beat punctuated with bright piano tones that reminds me a little of The National, while the latter is a sublime slow burner; both culminating in wonderfully emotive and cathartic guitar solos. Yet sadly these moments are the exception, not the norm. Rarely is the guitar work this adroit and articulate, instead manifesting as crude fuzzy walls of sound with very little actual substance to them. The heavy rumble of tracks like ‘Dulling The Horns’ and ‘Rung Cold’ are all thunder and no lightning.

There are certainly moments of brilliance on this record, but the problem is that they are often simply that: moments. The hint of steel guitar at the end of ‘Cloud or Mountain’, the splashes of sax on ‘Disintegrate’, and the Celtic folk breakdown at the close of ‘Bonnie One’, are all highlights of the record that reside within otherwise unremarkable tracks. Bright pockets of melody piercing through the overbearing drone. These are the parts I would end up looking forward to each listen, and as I found myself wishing for more of them, I realised these moments were the quintessential Wild Pink sound that I had previously struggled to put my finger on. This record’s bright pockets, which here feel oases in a wasteland, were once the norm, were once what the band’s whole albums would sound like.

Don’t get me wrong, Dulling The Horns is far from a terrible record. It’s solid and dependable, if a little unremarkable. The kind of fuzzy riffs on offer here are an itch that I rarely need scratched, and in those rare moments I would likely find myself looking elsewhere for a fix. If this sound is your jam then power to you, but I have to admit to myself that there’s little here for me. If nothing else listening to this record gave me a new appreciation for what came before. I miss the soft haze of Yolk in the Fur, the bright shimmer of A Billion Little Lights, the bold swings of ILYSM. For the first time I can confidently say: I want something that sounds like Wild Pink.