Wolf People’s third proper full-length, Ruins, came out today on Jagjaguwar, and it’s no secret the underground psychedelic folk-rock band’s following has a staunch supporter or two on the Mercury’s staff. (Guilty.) Coming at the end of the worst week in recent American history, the title of the new album seems positively prescient, perhaps even cautionary. But what Wolf People offer with this slab of molten riff, noddy thunder, and Evermore folk melody, in perhaps their most accessible work to date, is as much an abstract elegy as it is a document of rejuvenation and reinvention. At a moment when turning away from the news on the internet and the television seems nearly impossible to do for any sustained length of time, Ruins draws wide arcs that are both evergreen and wholly relevant to right now. Musically speaking (and perhaps lyric-wise, too), the album’s themes explore how the turmoil of change ossifies into the immense strokes of history, evolution, geology, and elemental rebirth.
Maybe that sounds like a ludicrously lofty responsibility for an English four-piece that makes unabashed use of rock ’n’ roll's most familiar tools—well-worn tricks like guitar feedback, tumbling drums, and stoned-out midtempo groove are the gist of Ruins’ grist—and maybe someone like myself who’s already good and devoted to the band is predisposed to implanting this week's raw emotions into the reassurance of Wolf People’s sound. It’s fair; for all its shrieking-gale jam-outs and Wicker Man witchery, this album is a comfort to me right now. It evokes my pre-teen years spent poring over Led Zeppelin’s Crowley ciphers, not-so-carefully wielding the ax of Pink Floyd’s behind-the-moon lunacy, wondering exactly what the fuck Peter Gabriel was on about on the inner double spread of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. It evokes the springlike blossoms of my early-20s discovery of tricky-to-spell albums like Liege & Lief and Odyssey & Oracle, of the catalogs of groups like Procol Harum and the Creation beyond those one or two hit tracks. And while Wolf People's juxtaposition of lamenting folk and medieval battle-rock doesn’t really sound like any of those bands, they DO sound so very English to me right now. As a lifelong Anglophile who’s experiencing a moment of profound disgust with his home country, it’s the best balm that could be dropped.
All of this is to say that Ruins rocks. That’s all 12-year-old me would have required from it, that's all 22-year-old me would have required from it, and that’s all I require from it today. I don’t need to be explicitly told about Thatcherism or Brexit to be given the perspective that today’s problems are only momentary, and yet it’s nice to be reminded that the UK have weathered just-as-terrible (and worse) changes as we are undergoing now, and haven’t completely sunk themselves to the bottom of the North Sea just yet. There’s surprising depth to the album and the suggestion of blind turns and unexplored chasms that I haven’t yet ducked down. I’ll get to them in time. For now, Wolf People’s melancholy melodies roam the fields and moors and stone circles that exist in the Britain of my imagination, and I’m very grateful to be visiting them today.
Wolf People's Ruins is available at all of these places and you should listen to it.