Skin by WILD POWWERS

Wild Powwers Update the Ghosts of Grunge on "Skin"
by KEXP- MARTIN DOUGLAS

It’s safe to say grunge music – the albatross hanging over the Seattle music scene for a solid three decades now – is the style the city is best known for, to the extent that the vast majority of contemporary guitar bands consciously avoid sounding anything like it. Instead, they lean hard into metal, they take acid and space out, they clutch tighter to their anoraks, they channel the rush of their teenage garage band years, they chew more bubblegum, they forget most of the chords they learned and start watching a lot of feminist stand-up comedy, they dive headlong into their parents’ yacht rock collections, they discover Sade, they trade their guitars for turntables.

Truth be told, in my humble opinion, the last truly great grunge record was Superunknown, and that came from a band spiritually aligned with the musical possibilities of the genre. Kim Thayil once described the genre as one part metal, one-half part psychedelic, and one-and-a-half parts punk. Listening to Skin, the very good third full-length by Seattle’s Wild Powwers (out tomorrow on Nadine Records), proves there are bands in town who care enough about the elemental combination to have the science down pat.

Which is not to say the music of Lara Hilgemann (guitars, vocals) Jordan Gomes (bass) Lupe Flores (drums, vocals) should be reduced to a mere formula or recipe. Like every good band ever, Wild Powwers have imbued a very individual sense of character into their music. For starters, they’ve always displayed a very fun sense of humor on the album-length narrative Doris Rising and the as-straightforward-as-they-are-capable-of-being Hugs and Kisses and Other Things. Skin is a slightly more serious record, but you can’t be accused of being too stoic when you name one of your pulsing barnburners “Well, Shit” and self-deprecatingly title your bereaved closing ballad “Sad Sap.”

Plus, it seems incredibly difficult to not have fun getting to play these songs.

The band has a deep regard for song structure, a great facility for building their songs. Slinking around with them like dance partners in a dimly lit bar and proceeding to pump their fists hard (opener “Buff Stuff”). Starting them up like a car engine, giving them a second to warm up, and hitting the throttle with gusto (the aforementioned “Well, Shit”). Rising with the sun and going on a trail jog (“Brand New Order”). Grabbing hands and hips and swaying in 6/8 time in the finest of teenage dress clothes (“May I Have This Dance?”). Hilgemann’s voice is arguably the group’s signature instrument; smooth and crooning, jagged and spiky, sometimes within the confines of the same song. Always tuneful.

“Night Sweats” settles into a disquieting feeling, circling into a mental and emotional struggle in different shades of black and shifting tempos. (Wild Powwers are exceptionally good at turning sharp corners in their songs and traveling to completely different places musically but staying in the same place emotionally.) “Sad Sap” stands among the very best songs the band has recorded yet, deliriously tired but unable to fall asleep, drowsily swaying with the sounds of the night while Hilgemann forlornly spouts a melody crystalline and carrying the weight of years while still managing to float. <meta charset="utf-8"/>Counting sheep until the act nullifies its purpose, parked in front of the television until the calendar cycles into the next year. It goes a long way to exhibit the multitudes in which Wild Powwers are capable of showing: Humor and sadness, the spirit of their influences and the force of their own personality.

The bitter with the sweet. That’s how some of the best things are made.

WILD POWWERS are 3 Seattle kids who “specialize in the sort of carefree grunge riff-rock that gets better the dirtier it gets. Each layer of meticulously gnarly distortion, each off-kilter lyric, drenched in garage-echo reverb, is pure Pacific Northwest filth” - KEXP.

wildpowwers.com
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