Wand
“Help Desk”/”Goldfish” EP
Drag City
Don’t put Wand away just yet. 2024 holds more in store for these underground psychedelic drifters, even with heads still spinning from the slowly unraveling mystery, unpredictable blowouts, and serene austerity of the shadowy Vertigo, released to critical acclaim in July. The effects won’t wear off for quite some time.
Two alluring escapees that evaded capture for one of the year’s most intriguing and immersive albums have been caught in EP form, granting even greater access into the artistry of an ever-evolving enterprise that lives in the darkest of indie-rock margins, aloof and fragile, yet willing to methodically leap into the radiant void with Radiohead and Doves. Rarely has Wand sounded as delicate or existentially lost as when they tantalizingly bleed out on “Goldfish,” its seeping guitar feedback, oozing horns, lilting vocals, and stray piano melancholy attacked from a distance by metallic swooping and skittering and pecked at like crows by light, precise drumming. And that’s just the half of it.
The arresting “Help Desk” may not have all the answers, but it’s searching for something — salvation maybe, or at least understanding and companionship? Murky and lush, its quivering beauty is simply breathtaking, with a gentle grace for anyone experiencing alienated affection, dislocation or a lack of faith. An enthralling piece, three different remixed versions of “Help Desk” are included here, all wrestling with the original and expanding its possibilities — Beat Detectives’ trippy, hip-hop treatment a city of sounds at night, Dead Rider making it shimmer and squirm, and Dean Spunt blurring it beyond recognition with dreamy smears and hypnotic shaking.
Wand lives on in mostly quiet desperation.
