Wild Nothing – ‘Hold’ album review: A taste of throwback synthpop for the indie kids
After five years away, Jack Tatum has fired up Wild Nothing for Hold, their first new album in half a decade. With the new experience of being a father fueling his work, Tatum steps up as his own producer for the first time since Wild Nothing’s debut LP Gemini back in 2010. That album was filled with swirling dream pop and sudden left turns into drowsy downtempo. Hold, by contrast, is a straightforward dive into the bright lights of 1980s synthpop.
The opening track and the album’s biggest indie single, ‘Headlights On’, is the perfect table setter. An easy groove featuring go-go bells and echoing vocals covers up one of the emotional tracks. But even as Tatum sings about fucking up and being hard to love, it never feels as though he’s actually wanting or able to confront the darkness behind those sentiments.
Tatum’s control over his craft is clear. Whether it’s on more relaxed tracks like ‘The Bodybuilder’ and ‘Prima’ or uptempo jams like ‘Basement El Dorado’, the atmosphere of Hold always feels slick and euphoric, like a great night out or a chill night in. The album gets significantly spacier towards its conclusion, especially on tracks like ‘Alex’ and ‘Little Chaos’, placing that euphoric feeling of floating right at the album’s centre.
But with slickness also comes a feeling of detachment. Whether it’s because Tatum chose to make everything so synthetic or because he fails to truly communicate some of the more complex emotions he sings about, Hold never gives itself the opportunity to lay into dynamics. Songs like ‘Suburban Solutions’ and ‘Dial Tone’ should be snarkier, sneakier, or weightier. Instead, they just feel like sledgehammers of synthpop – castoff tracks from a nostalgic radio station of the past.
By the time the looping drums and pulsating keyboards of ‘Pulling Down The Moon (Before You)’ come in, any real thread that kept Hold together basically falls apart. What you’re left with is a collection of songs that jam hard on their own but only fit together sonically. When it comes to providing a throughline to the album, Tatum’s newfound fatherhood or futuristic anxieties don’t hold much weight.
At a brisk 40 minutes and nothing in the way of real experimentation or edge, Hold is a well-produced, well-performed, well-meaning album that wants so hard to be acceptable to everybody. It is very much acceptable, but not much can be said after that.
Had Tatum really dug into the emotions of becoming a father, gone for some truly bizarre synth tones, or even just thrown a curveball into the album at some point, it would have been a lot more interesting. As it stands, Hold is little more than a pleasant diversion, one with real skill and joy but also with few surprises.
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