Here goes Wild Nothing

“Here goes nothing…”

The crowd collectively holds their breath. The next two words ricocheting off the backs of their teeth and around their closed mouths. Is anyone going to say it?

“Wild Nothing.”

Their words dissolve into laughter. Their heads slowly shake from side to side and their shoulders bounce. Everyone who gathered at the Independent in San Francisco on the night of October 28th is in on the joke. They revel in the ridiculousness of the pun, but mostly they revel in the satisfaction of not being the one who said it.

Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing has been finishing the puns people wish they had the courage to finish themselves since 2010. With three albums under his belt, Tatum has never been shy about experimenting with sounds or leaning into surface level lyrics. While his fourth album Indigo (2018) takes on a more straightforward approach in sound with its thick and saturated 80s vibe, Tatum embraces the contradictions that often arise from the simplest experiences and emotions.

Although loved by Wild Nothing’s fans, most critics received the latest album with cynicism. They claimed that the lyrics were too conspicuous, and the sound merely imitated its 80’s predecessors. But Indigo is clearly not an album for critics, it’s an album for fans. It’s an album that is shamelessly about love and loss, or “heartbreak 2.0” as Tatum calls it on the song “Wheel of Misfortune.”

In a perfect survey of their discography, Wild Nothing takes the audience through the universal truths of passion, love, and sorrow that people are hesitant to admit applies to their own lives. They remind us that, sometimes, we love things simply because we love them. And sometimes, people make music simply for the sake of music.

Article and Photos by Rebekah Gonzalez