Review Summary: Too much "dream," not enough "pop."
Much of the promotion around Wild Nothing’s
Life of Pause was about Jack Tatum not just writing another album, but instead “creating another world” for the listener. Tatum took this mantra so far during the creation of his third album that he even personally designed an entire room based on the album’s feel and vibe for promotion. Much of Tatum’s work as Wild Nothing has centered on taking sound cues from dynamic bands like the Cure, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Smiths, while adding his own trademark slick studio polish. This gives his compositions undeniable retro qualities with simultaneously modern appeal, making it rich work for subtle experimentation and deviations. It is no surprise then that the stand out quality of
Life of Pause is Tatum’s willingness to play around with more adventurous compositions and instrumentation, a quality which has a two pronged effect. On the positive side, the willingness of Tatum to branch out and take some chances is an exciting idea, especially since the dream pop genre which Wild Nothing is lumped into often has only a few distinct musical motifs to begin with. Flip the coin, and it is easy to see that experimentation in the dream pop genre often turns studio wizardly into relative madness, with an artist often trying to insert too many ideas and sounds into each track, leaving the listener struggling to comprehend the drive or aim of the album as a whole.
As it turns out, while the idea of branching out sounds good in theory, executing it is a much more difficult prospect -- even for someone as gifted at writing pop melodies as Tatum. This is why
Life of Pause turns out to be an interesting - but also rather frustrating - listen. During the course of eleven tracks and nearly fifty minutes of music, Tatum jumps around from one idea to another, sometimes to great effect such as when he and uses polyrhythms on "Reichpop,” a track simultaneously floating lightly with its marimba and xylophone melodies, and hits hard with some timely booming hits on the bass drum. The song is a true meshing of worlds -- an atmospheric adventure, so to speak -- and it is the greatest example of Tatum “creating another world” for the listener on this album. “TV Queen” and the title track are two other standout tracks - not because of their experimentation - but because they resemble Wild Nothing’s previous albums the most (especially
Nocturne). Both also feature the melodic hooks that the band are known for front and center, without any deviations or distractions of any kind.
There are exactly two places where
Life of Pause stumbles into the aforementioned experimental doodling that has bogged down so many albums before it. As is usually the case on most full length albums that run out of steam, one decline occurs during the final two tracks of the album, making the last eleven minutes of the album’s running time difficult to get through. The other slide in quality occurs during the second and third tracks, which by most accounts, is possibly the worst place that this could happen; not only because it directly follows the sublime “Reichpop,” but also because it takes all the wind out of the album's sails, failing to set up the rest of the tracks well. Both of these segments of the album which total around twenty minutes, are ripe with ideas, but they simply lack the hook that’s supposed to bring it all together. That is not to say that these four tracks are garbage - they are just too often shrouded behind atmospherics, which ends up watering down the final product dramatically.
On
Life of Pause, there are some truly extraordinary moments that will capture even the most inattentive listener’s ears, while some other tracks struggle to have any sort of grander point or go anywhere in particular. This latter case makes some cuts overstay their welcome, making the album as a whole more of a drag than it really should be. It is a testament to the relative greatness of Tatum’s previous work as Wild Nothing that even with some of the best tracks that he has ever made being on this album, it quickly becomes clear that Tatum may have focused too much on the ‘dream’ aspect of his music, and not enough on the ‘pop,’ this time around. Too many of the tracks lack the hook that made Wild Nothing’s music distinctive in a world full of closet-crooners, who often lack both substance and style. Tatum’s room became the literal to what he has done over the past few years with his music – he has separated himself from the rest of the pack, emerged from closets and into professional studios, and quite literally built out a space that he believes fits his music the best. While it seems like he feels completely comfortable as a dream pop-wizard, there are some growing pains evident on
Life of Pause that unfortunately give it the dubious honor of Wild Nothing’s least cohesive and least exciting album to date.
