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Jul 24, 2025 Web Exclusive By Gary Knight

Exhibiting good taste more so than wisdom beyond their years, The Wildmans deliver sincere and unpretentious mountain music and covers of choice selections from country-folk’s yesteryear on Longtime Friend, and although it’s to mixed ends, several songs (including—crucially—an original tune) reveal where their character may lie.

Led by vocalist and fiddler Aila Wildman and her brother Elisha (guitars and backing vocals—some lead vox), the outfit finds their best footing within the sonic murkiness and slow-tempo mystery of William Davis Hoover’s “Absolute Zero,” alongside the foreboding and quietly unfolding title track, the only song written by the duo that approaches the lyrical prowess of the other writers included here, one of whom is Gram Parsons, whose work appears twice.

In fact, one of the best showcases of Aila’s warm and affable croon is the group’s take on “Luxury Liner,” which resembles more the superior (and hard charging) Emmylou Harris rendition from 1976, and if The Wildmans ever want to complicate their recorded sound to progress from the sometimes frustratingly inoffensive presentations that mark their New West debut, they may find inspiration in Harris’ nearly 50-year-old recording.
Similarly, as songsters, if they agree “Before I Go” passes for a prequel to Parson’s (and Thomas Stanley Brown’s) “Return of the Grievous Angel,” then a listen to the two songs back to back might suggest the roads they’ll have to go down, down, down before Elisha’s aspiring rambler is welcomed back to town. (www.wildmans.bandcamp.com/album/longtime-friend)

Author rating: 6/10