Wild Pink : Dulling the Horns

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Wild Pink Dulling the Horns review

John Ross is sick of all his shit. His band Wild Pink has steadily become one of indie rock’s brightest bands, toiling in the trade of widescreen and expansive music that gazes towards the stars. On their last full length, 2022’s ILYSM, Ross was navigating the emotions and turmoil of a shocking cancer diagnosis, the trauma of which a person could spend years trying to understand. But on Dulling the Horns, Wild Pink’s great new album, Ross has taken a scorched-earth approach to that period in his life and has rebuilt Wild Pink from the ashes. 

Do you still believe it?” Ross asks twice in the great album opener and first single “The Fences of Stonehenge.” It’s unclear whether he’s asking this to the listener or to himself. Either way, it plays like a check in at the start of a journey. This is a fresh start for Wild Pink. You need not have been on board from the beginning to appreciate what Ross—along with core Wild Pink members Dan Keegan (drums), Arden Yonkers (bass), and Mike ‘Slo Mo’ Brenner (pedal steel)—have built here, but to hear it in the context of what came before will make one reassess the limits of Ross’ songwriting. Because really, when you’re already as great as creating music the size of planets 3 albums in, what else can you do but take a laser through it and blow it all up? Dulling the Horns is a direct hit. 

While remnants of sound from the previous albums still flutter in the air like ashes from fireworks, Dulling the Horns is the most cutting and direct album yet from Wild Pink. “Pressure is the plan,” Ross sings on the rousing album highlight “Sprinter’s Brain.” Sure enough, this album is thick with pressure and a whole lotta fuzz. The guitars immediately stand out as the most significant change from the last few records, like R.E.M. going from Automatic for the People to Monster. Wild Pink will still drop in the occasional pedal-steel and fiddle riff, the guitars overtake the mix. They grumble and growl. They’re forceful and loud. They’re country-fried one moment and weightily sludgy the next, like on “Cloud or Mountain,” a song which never lets you know where it’s going next. That’s been sort of the appeal of Wild Pink’s music. Their songs morph and play around with structures that they almost sound different each time you listen. Dulling the Horns is like that too, but in a much more deliberate way. Ross plays around with the songwriting tropes and sounds and puts them through a grinder. 

It makes all the more sense why Wild Pink is touring next year with MJ Lenderman. I don’t know if before this record I would’ve pegged them to be a compatible pair, but in the span of a month, it’s become abundantly clear that these are two artists who can rig classic rock songwriting into something modern and self-sardonic, and when it’s time to let the guitar do the talking, they know when to employ a juicy riff or a righteous solo, as Ross does at the end of “St. Catherine Street.” 

Both artists also understand the intricate connection between sports and human nature. A lot of Dulling the Horns sees Ross grappling with change and moving on, seemingly keeping the brim of his Orioles hat faced ahead, but on “Eating the Egg Whole,” Ross uses the Michael Jordan-era Washington Wizards and the Montreal Expos-turned-Washington Nationals as a way of saying some memories just can’t be repeated. No sense in trying to recreate perfection. We can only take what we’ve learned and build something new. “My stupid ass is always searching / Hoping for a pearl when I open up my fist.” Ross might be sick of his shit, but he’s still going after it.


Label: Fire Talk

Year: 2024


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