If Japanese Breakfast, Beach Fossils, or Alvvays are among your favorite bands, free your calendar on November 9th! You’ll geek out for Wild Nothing at the 9:30 Club at 7 PM performing with New York indie lofi artist JW Francis.
Jack Tatum, under the moniker Wild Nothing, is a Virginia-based singer/songwriter who has been reviving the modern-day dream pop scene since 2010. He started his music journey with the jangle pop noisy soundscapes of Gemini and Golden Haze made out of his dorm room in college, and evolved into the guitar riffs and basslines with electrifying vocals of Indigo and Laughing Gas that would become Wild Nothing’s staple sound. Though it was Nocturne, Wild Nothing’s 2012 album, and Ariana’s favorite of the artist’s, that brought him to the forefront of the dream pop scene, with hit songs like Nocturne and Rheya.
Wild Nothing is kicking off his North American tour here in D.C. to promote his first new album in five years, Hold – released on October 27th. Hold is also Tatum’s first self-produced album since his debut release, Gemini. His single, “Headlights On,” off the record was created with the help of Harriette Pilbeam of Hatchie and Tommy Davidson of Beach Fossils, about Tatum and his wife’s struggles in their relationship. The song with lyrics such as “You try to calm me and I turn away, I always turn away/I don’t know why I have to be this way/I’d rather not be so hard to love/I fucked it up, I fucked it up again” consists of themes relatable to all teens and young adults.
Hold is a record Wild Nothing wrote during a period of new parenthood about ego and life choices after he and his wife moved back to his home state of Virginia after living in Los Angeles for five years. His song “Suburban Solutions” describes the quiet and comfortable feeling of living in a suburb, along with the capitalist hellscape and isolation that comes along with it. This can be seen in lyrics like “There’s a small monthly payment/Click here to apply/And change that pathetic excuse for/What you call a life.” This is all done while embodying Wild Nothing’s iconic 80s synth-pop sounds inspired by Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel.
If we’ve convinced you to pull up, general admission tickets go for $30 (not too shabby). We will see you there!
