Wye Oak – “Spitting Image”

Kendall Atwater

Wye Oak – “Spitting Image”

Kendall Atwater

Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack, the two members of the great Baltimore-bred indie duo Wye Oak, have been hellaciously busy lately. Last year, the band released a run of one-off tracks. Last month, Wasner’s solo project Flock Of Dimes released the EP Like So Much Desire. And later this week, Wye Oak will follow up the 2018 album The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs with a new EP called No Horizon. Up until now, Wye Oak have shared two of its tracks, “AEIOU” and “No Place.” Today, they’ve dropped a third song from the EP.

The newest of those No Horizon tracks — and presumably the last one we’ll hear before the EP comes out on Friday — is called “Spitting Image.” As with the other tracks, Wasner and Stack recorded this one with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the kind of touch that really allows Wye Oak to go for full dazed-beauty sensory overload. Over rising, impressionistic tides of drums and electronics, Wasner’s voice winds in and out of the chorus. It’s pretty overwhelming. Listen below.

In a press release, Wasner says:

“Spitting Image” is about trying to manage the sheer volume of information we are expected to absorb to exist. As naturally curious creatures, the idea of seeing everything at once initially sounds intriguing, but of course we quickly reach the limits of what we can consume, and are forced to contend with how little we can actually control.

The song was an attempt to emulate the feeling of emotional and psychological overload as the waves of excess exceed the limit of our capacity to absorb them.

The No Horizon EP is out 7/31 on Merge. Pre-order it here.

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