Wand are the most underrated rock band working today. Between the LA combo’s main catalog and project mastermind Cory Hanson’s solo work, it’s been a long time since he released a less-than-essential record.
After emerging as side characters in the Ty Segall garage rock universe in the early to mid-2010s, Wand became both more ambitious and more accessible, transforming from hard-crashing psychedelic punks into ‘90s alt-rock rock revivalists fond of soaring guitar heroism, engrossing textures, and grand, sweeping song structures. Both 2017’s Plum and 2019’s Laughing Matter suggested a band with boundless horizons but a well-developed sense of self — great songwriters, arrangers, and performers who knew how to punch well above their weight class. Hanson spent the pandemic era making his own records, 2021’s Pale Horse Rider and last year’s triumphant Western Cum. And now, suddenly, it’s been half a decade since we had a proper Wand album.
Though Western Cum’s transcendent dual-guitar adventures certainly sounded like the work of a rock band, this week’s new Vertigo leans into the ensemble element by building its songs out of the best parts of jam sessions. All told, Wand compiled 50 hours of improvisation in their studio as rough materials for the writing process. Sometimes band members toggled over to different instruments, unlocking unforeseen possibilities. Once the music was culled into dynamic shapes, bassist Evan Backer added string and wind arrangements, further heightening the drama. The result is a set of patient yet explosive guitar-powered epics that reaffirm Wand’s stature as one of underground rock’s hidden treasures.
Last week, the veteran culture editor and indie-rock zealot David Malitz went to a concert and observed, “Based on the massive songs they played last night, the new Wand album is going to miraculously find the exact midpoint of 1995 Smashing Pumpkins, 1995 Oasis, and 1995 Radiohead.” Cue up “Smile,” a floating, distorted lullaby in the liminal space between “Champagne Supernova” and the second disc of Mellon Collie, or witness the desolate landscape of “JJ” blooming into fuzzed-out beauty like a forgotten highlight from the Airbag / How Am I Driving? EP, and you’ll realize he’s right on. At this point, who could be surprised? The band hit its stride when it locked into alt-rock blockbuster mode, pulling influence from groups that match pop instincts with a tendency to wrangle all kinds of bluster from their six-strings.
On Vertigo, the guitars serve every function you could imagine, from rhythm to texture to melody to the cataclysmic crunch of a well-placed power chord. Hanson and Robbie Cody mash their delay pedals and let the percolating chords crosshatch with the beat. They dredge up clouds of melodic noise. They pound and scratch; they squeal and moan; they meander into the atmosphere. And yet with Hanson’s plucky, determined tenor in the spotlight, an arsenal of keyboards bolstering the vibes, and Backer’s orchestrations lending cinematic splendor to every track, the guitars are often sneaking through the background, mirroring Wand’s diamond-in-the-rough status.
More than anything, Wand still sound amazingly, inescapably like peak ’90s Radiohead — or maybe, given the ambitious treatments they’ve applied to these songs, modern Radiohead tapping back into the glories of their youth. Hanson’s melodies continue to evoke Thom Yorke’s fragile melancholia, a resemblance that comes into even clearer focus with Backer playing the Jonny Greenwood string-arranger role. Hearing “High Time” build from stratified chaos to euphoria or the skronking, pounding “Mistletoe” bottom out into eerie symphonic abstraction, it’s impossible not to think about those guys from Oxford. Hanson has dismissed Thief, his early group with Meatbodies’ Chad Ubovich, as “a pretty boy band…trying to be Radiohead.” As Wand have evolved, he’s let that impulse creep back in, consciously or not, with spectacular results.
As a lyricist, Hanson tends to lock on to a compelling phrase and turn it into a refrain. On “JJ,” he keeps coming back to the line, “All the time you spent/ You gotta be running from your head,” seemingly reflecting on a friend who disappeared into mindless screen time as a means of self-medication. “That’s the way it works and nobody gets to choose,” he repeats on opener “Hangman,” matter-of-factly shrugging at the cruelty of fate, though the recurring motif “What you paid for/ When you found it out,” as “High Time” reaches its fiery climax, may be hinting that not all consequences are random and undeserved.
Hanson mirrors the vast, empty expanse of “Lifeboat” with a story about getting lost at sea, unnoticed by an indifferent world but still having meaningful encounters along the way — maybe a metaphor for Wand’s existence just outside the hype cycle, or maybe just another vivid portrait of the human experience. The picture he paints of life on Earth is not particularly hopeful, but he and his band continue to provide a staggering soundtrack for such bleak reflections. If you have not been paying attention, it’s time to tune in.
Vertigo is out 7/26 on Drag City.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Ice Spice’s Y2K
• Sinai Vessel’s I Sing
• Rakim’s G.O.D.’s Network (Reb7rth)
• Mustard’s Faith Of A Mustard Seed
• Ben Seretan’s Allora
• Porter Robinson’s SMILE! 😀
• Nathan Bowles Trio’s Are Possible
• Respire’s Hiraeth
• Pat Metheny’s MoonDial
• Dave Harrington’s Skull Dream
• State Faults’ Children Of The Moon
• Crack Cloud’s Red Mile
• Cults’ To The Ghosts
• Nightshift’s Homosapien
• Abbie Ozard’s everything still worries me
• Robber Robber’s Wild Guess
• Modern Color’s There Goes the Dream
• Humanist’s On The Edge Of A Lost And Lonely World
• Painted Shield’s Painted Shield 3
• Clothing’s From Memory
• Alex Izenberg & The Exiles’ Alex Izenberg & The Exiles
• Dearthworms’ Sapsucker
• Fancy Gap’s Fancy Gap
• Falling In Reverse’s Popular Monster
• Hakushi Hasegawa’s Mahōgakkō
• Julia-Sophie’s forgive too slow
• Empire Of The Sun’s Ask That God
• Joshua Bassett’s The Golden Years
• Passepartout Duo & Inoyama Land’s Radio Yugawara
• The Red Clay Strays’ Made By These Moments
• Omnigone’s Feral
• Kaonashi’s A Second Chance At Forever: The Brilliant Lies From Casey Diamond
• Jimetta Rose And The Voices Of Creation’s Things Are Getting Better
• Lime Cordiale’s Enough Of The Sweet Talk
• mirrored fatality’s LABUAD MEKLOOQ
• Laceration’s I Erode
• Shonali’s One Machine At A Time
• Devin Maxwell’s Timebending
• Wild Rivers’ Never Better
• The Hanseroth Twins’ Vera
• Sylo’s dreamt that I was
• Ferry Townes’ Side Effects Of Happiness
• Zeshan B’s O Say, Can You See?
• PEACE DE RÉSISTANCE’s Lullaby For the Debris
• MisterWives’ Nosebleeds: Encore
• Nessa Barrett’s AFTERCARE
• White Collar’s White Collar
• The Doozers’ Becoming An Entity
• SosMula’s SLEEZ RELIGION
• GORDO’s DIAMANTE
• Pete Townshend’s PETE TOWNSHEND LIVE > IN CONCERT 1985-2001 box set
• Blur’s Live At Wembley Stadium
• Bill Callahan’s Resuscitate! Live Album
• Sleaford Mods’ Divide And Exit 10th Anniversary Edition
• Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera’s Deluxe
• The Police’s Synchronicty 40th Anniversary Box Set
• Rockabye Baby!’s Lullaby Renditions Of Janet Jackson
• Friendship Commanders’ BILL – The Steve Albini Mixes
• Kississippi’s damned if i do it for you EP
• Velvet Rouge’s Velvet Rouge EP
• Stella Santana’s Twelve Feet High EP
• JakoJako’s Segmente EP
