Surprise-dropped digitally in June with a physical release slated for August 5, Tween marks a quizzical return for Wye Oak, the Baltimore duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack, neither of whom lives in Baltimore any more. (Stack lives in Marfa, Texas Wasner in Durham, North Carolina.) “Quizzical” because they call the 35-minute, eight-song collection a non-album, a step sideways rather than backward or forward in time.
And also because it documents the transitory period between the duo’s 2011 breakthrough guitar-heavy third album, Civilian, and their guitarless 2014 electro-pop reinvention, Shriek. Sounds awkward, but it’s a bold move to pick up the scraps from the floor, finish them up and declare them worth hearing, even if they don’t fit tidily on any previous (or future) albums.
Song by song you could be forgiven for asking “Is this the same band?” This is especially true of the leap between Side A’s heavy, bluesy, Sonic Youthish jam Too Right and Side B’s gauzily futuristic (I liken the army of synths to unicorns farting out clouds) Better (For Esther), on which Wasner sings in a much higher and lighter way.
But if you’ve already made the leap to Shriek and/or listened to Wasner’s pop/R&B project Dungeonesse, you’re probably prepared for this. Probably. On Tween, more than ever, we’re being let into Wye Oak’s studio process and experiments. The album begins with ambient bloops and bleeps on near-instrumental Out Of Nowhere, moves through almost-familiar Kate Bush dream pop terrain on If You Should See, and through Wasner’s lovely guitar work on No Dreaming. There is no slacking off here anywhere.
And yet it feels like you spend 32 minutes waiting for final song Watching The Waiting, the most satisfying on the not-album. It marches forward bittersweetly, eternally, like a big burst of sunlight, with an ecstatic synth solo that sounds like a whirly tube. It may have been made during a transitory period, but they knew it was perfect.
Top track: Watching The Waiting
Wye Oak play Lee’s Palace Friday (August 5). See listing.
