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May 31, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Graham Tolbert

Wye Oak (Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack) are releasing Every Day Like the Last, a new singles collection, on June 23 via Merge. Now they have shared another new song from it, “I Learned it From You.” Watch the lyric video below.

“This song is about unconsciously recreating dysfunctional patterns, and about the exhaustion and despair that comes from realizing that awareness alone isn’t necessarily enough to save you from repeating your past,” says Wasner in a press release. “The metallic sound in the intro is the sound of Andy pulling down the metal door of our storage unit practice space (which we would open between takes to get some fresh air from the hallway). Conveniently enough, the hallway also functioned as a perfectly serviceable reverb. Later, our friend Joseph Decosimo recorded the fiddle parts with Andy at Doom Homestead.”

Previously Wye Oak shared the album’s title track, “Every Day Like the Last,” via a lyric video. Every Day Like the Last features three new song and six previously released singles not found on any of their albums.

The collection includes “Its Way With Me” (which ended up on former President Barak Obama’s summer playlist), “TNT” (which was one of our Songs of the Week), “Walk Soft” (which also made our Songs of the Week list), “Fortune” (which was our #1 on that week’s Songs of the Week list), “Fear of Heights” (which was another #1 on that week’s Songs of the Week list), and “Evergreen” (which was shared in 2019 via the Adult Swim Singles series and was again one of our Songs of the Week).

“Something that felt exciting to me was being a little bit more fleet-footed and light about being able to put things out into the world,” said Wasner in a previous press release, about releasing so many standalone singles. “A lot of these songs, we would write them and record them and then they’d come out a couple of weeks later, which, to me, just sort of feels so much more in line with how the creative process works and feels on our end of things.”

“We both were feeling not wanting to be tethered into the machine in the way that we had been for so long,” added Stack. “We just wanted to be able to make stuff in the room. And when we were able to do that, the aspirations shifted, because we were able to exercise this other muscle that we hadn’t in a long time.”

Quite a few of these songs were originally shared during the pandemic.

“Trying to find comfort in the unknowing resonated with me a lot, and I feel like that is a thread that has run through everything—finding cheer in the doom of the world,” said Stack. “Things have been tumultuous in so many different ways over the last four years while we’ve been [making these songs]. Both our lives have undergone extreme changes on an individual level, not even thinking about on the larger level of what everyone’s going through.”

“That’s like the weighted blanket of the album for me,” added Wasner. “It’s just like, we’re all fucking floating in space. Nobody knows what’s happening. If you find someone or something that can offer you some kind of solace and some kind of reassurance, that’s all that really anyone can hope for. There are so many songs where I’m dangling in space, and that song is a plea for reassurance. Which we all so desperately need.”

Of the album’s title, Wasner said: “Every Day Like the Last—that could mean every day like the day that came before, or it could mean every day like the last day that you get. Both meanings apply. But for me, trying to live inside of the uncertainty is the theme. That is the thread that ties all the songs together—tolerating the discomfort of not knowing.”

Wye Oak released their last regular album, The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs, back in April 2018 via Merge. That was followed by a new EP, No Horizon, in July 2020. In 2021 the duo released Civilian + Cut All the Wires: 2009–2011, a 10th anniversary reissue of their 2011 album Civilian plus a 12-song collection of rare and unreleased songs from the era.

Wassner has also been busy with her Flock of Dimes solo project. In 2020 Wasner surprise-released Like So Much Desire, a Flock of Dimes EP, which was followed in 2021 by the album Head of Roses, both released by Sub Pop.

Read our 2021 The End interview with Wasner about endings and death here.

Read our 2018 interview with Wye Oak about The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs here.

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