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Jan 16, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Cara Robbins Wild Nothing

Wild Nothing (aka Jack Tatum) released a new album, Indigo, his fourth, back in August 2018 via Captured Tracks. It was our Album of the Week and one of our Top 100 Albums of 2018. Now he has shared a brand new single, “Blue Wings,” which is a song that almost made Indigo. Listen below, followed by his upcoming tour dates.

Tatum had this to say about the song in a press release: “There were a number of songs that were kicking when I was finishing Indigo and ‘Blue Wings’ was very nearly included. I had sent the album off to mastering, but the song didn’t sit right with me and I decided, at the last possible moment, to leave it off the album. It’s intentionally a very bittersweet sounding song. I asked Ben Talmi who did the string arrangements on ‘Shadow’ to help out with this very simple dissonant string part I was hearing in my head which is now my favorite element in the track. It’s a song about walking through to the other side of crippling self-doubt with the help of someone you love. It’s a reminder to myself not to let things spiral, hard as it may be at times.”

Read our 2018 interview with Wild Nothing on Indigo.

Read our 2018 Anatomy of a Song article on Wild Nothing where he detailed Indigo single “Partners in Motion.”

Also read our review of Indigo.

Previously Wild Nothing shared Indigo‘s first single and opening track, “Letting Go” (which was our #1 Song of the Week), as well as the 1980s-tastic “Partners in Motion” (which was also our #1 Song of the Week) and a strange video for “Letting Go.” That was followed by another song from the album, “Shallow Water,” a song about his wife that was #4 on our Songs of the Week list. Then he shared “Canyon on Fire” (which was our #2 Song of the Week).

The album is the follow-up to 2016’s somewhat underrated Life of Pause. Virginia-bred/Los Angeles-based Tatum recorded the demos solo and then spent four days at Sunset Sound’s Studio with drummer Cam Allen and guitarist Benji Lysaght to track the record live (Tatum played bass). Then producer Jorge Elbrecht (Ariel Pink, Gang Gang Dance, Japanese Breakfast) came on board to build out the rest of the album’s sound, including using parts of Tatum’s original demos. Elbrecht and Tatum mixed the album over 10 days in Denver and then Tatum put the finishing touches on Indigo at his Glassell Park studio in Los Angeles. Sonically, Tatum was going for a 1980s vibe.

“I wanted it to sound like a classic studio record, as close as I could get it there,” Tatum said in a previous press release. “It just boils down to me wanting to fit into some larger narrative, musically, in terms of these artists I love. 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.’”

The previous press release described the album as such: “Indigo is its own cyborg world, utilizing the artful mechanisms of human touch with the precision of technology to create the classic, pristine sound Tatum has been seeking his entire career. It finds Tatum at his most efficient, calculated, and confident after a decade of making music as Wild Nothing. On one hand, Indigo is a return to the fresh, transcendent sweep of his debut, 2010’s Gemini, and on the other, a culmination of heights reached, paths traveled, and lessons learned while creating the follow-ups, Nocturne and Life of Pause.”

Wild Nothing’s 2012 album, Nocturne, was Under the Radar’s #1 album of that year.

Read our 2016 interview with Wild Nothing.

Wild Nothing Tour Dates:

02/11 - Manchester, UK - YES
02/12 - Birmingham, UK - Mama Roux’s
02/13 - Leeds, UK - Belgrave Music Hall
02/14 - Glasgow, UK - Stereo
02/16 - Dublin, IE - Button Factory
02/18 - London, UK - Village Underground
02/19 - Brighton, UK - Komedia
02/20 - Paris, FR - La Maroquinerie
02/21 - Brussels, BE - AB Club
02/22 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso Noord
02/24 - Aarhus, DK - Atlas
02/25 - Hamburg, DE - Molotow
02/26 - Berlin, DE - Bi Nuu
02/27 - Warsaw, PL - Mala Warszawa
03/01 - Copenhagen, DK - Lille Vega
03/02 - Gothenburg, SE - Pustervik
03/03 - Stockholm, SE - Debaser
03/04 - Oslo, Norway - Parkteatret
03/07 - Milan, IT - Santeria Social Club
03/08 - Rome, IT - Monk Club
03/09 - Bologna, IT - Covo Club
03/11 - Zurich, CH - Mascotte
03/12 - Prague, CZ - Republic Rock Cafe
03/13 - Vienna, AT - WuK
04/05 - Tokyo, Japan - WWW X
04/06 - Kyoto, Japan - Metro
04/10 - Taipei City, Taiwan - The Wall

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