Gemini
Jack Tatum makes music as Wild Nothing and sounds about as removed from his home of Blacksburg, Va., as one could imagine. As he sounds a bit like a blend of Cocteau Twins and Atlas Sound, the songs on his full-length debut, *Gemini*, are mostly willowy and ethereal, but they’re tethered to a sturdy and sinewy backbone. “Chinatown” waltzes through a timeless, misty tableaux of wispy vocals and plucky guitars, with a faint verse/chorus/verse skeleton, while tracks like the plucky and fantastically sticky “Summer Holiday” and “Our Composition Book” have a jangly melancholy the evokes Johnny Marr and The Smiths. Tatum uses his charmingly imperfect falsetto on “Confirmation,” darting in and out of hazy keyboards and shyly bubbling guitar and bass lines. His voice takes on a darker, flatter intonation on songs like the murky “Pessimist” and the bittersweet “Live in Dreams.” *Gemini* is a beautiful, aural space that’s great for getting lost in. It sometimes feels like a record Ariel Pink might make if one day all the weird drained out of him.
Purchase physical LP/CD/Cassette via the label store www.omnianmusicgroup.com/products/gemini
Wild Nothing's achingly beautiful reflection of 80s dream-pop carves a tunnel from Ibiza's beaches to Manchester's rain-soaked fairgrounds.
If Wild Nothing's debut album, Gemini, consisted of nothing more that the song “Summer Holiday” and 25 minutes of a dial tone, it would still be one of the best records to come out of the lo-fi, reverb pop scene of 2010.
Childhood lingers throughout your life. Try as you might, a fully grown adult will never quite appreciate sunny days, fresh cut lawns and epic football games as much as an eight year old.