Indigo

Album review

For over a decade, Jack Tatum aka Wild Nothing has served as an indispensable ambassador for dream pop in all its splendour. Wrapping up his larger-than-life, dreamy melodies in guitars that reverberate out to infinity, the Virginian always pays equal attention to the microphone and the pen. His voice carries the same narrative thread, light and blurry, that Morrissey or Robert Smith used to unfurl amidst clouds of melancholy and surrealism with an uneasy charm... Wild Nothing retains this facility for ill-at-ease music that relates untellable stories. With Indigo, Tatum expands his palette, taking on board more synths and Eighties sounds. "I wanted it to sound like a classic studio record, as close as I could get it there", explains our sculptor of crystalline melodies. "It just boils down to me wanting to fit into some larger narrative, musically, in terms of these artists I love. The records that have influenced the actual sound of Indigo are by Roxy Music, Kate Bush, and Fleetwood Mac; Roxy Music’s Avalon is one of my favourite records ever. I think about how my music will age. Ideas of 'timeless' are going to be different — so if Indigo is not timeless then it’s at least 'out of time.'" Jack Tatum's strength lies in perfectly fusing these archetypal influences with Wild Nothing's unique characteristics. At the outset, his fourth album offers a cinematic dream pop, as if the four walls of the student digs where Wild Nothing was born had melted away, to reveal wide open spaces...© Max Dembo/Qobuz