Review Summary: Only one question: where's the fanfare?
By now, Wye Oak really ought to have established themselves as a forerunner in current indie music. From Civilian onward, the duo has achieved great consistency of quality. For what it’s worth, most agree that Civilian was appropriately appreciated. However, their subsequent release, Shriek, probably ought to have received more fanfare than it did. It was a great album on several fronts, shying away from the acoustics of the rest of their catalog, adopting a shinier electronic foundation, with few weak links to speak of. One suggestion is that the stylistic shift was enough to alienate the anticipating crowd, and yet I cannot help but feel that the record was still unmistakably Wye Oak in flavour and caliber. Perhaps no good explanation for their plateauing popularity is forthcoming, in which case one can only hope that their staple-status in the indie world has yet to concretize...
So comes Tween, in the midst of it all: an album (perhaps a ‘compilation’?) named quite bluntly to signify the band’s occupying an ‘in-between’ state with respect to musical direction between the releases of Civilian and Shriek. Here we find eight strong tracks compiled together, and the result is something that – by my lights – manages to stand perfectly on its own.
One can hear old and new sounds all across the record. ‘If You Should See’ feels right at home in Wye Oak's Civilian-era work, though ever-so-slight electronic elements undergird a few bridge passages, foreshadowing what was to be a more extreme stylistic shift come Shriek’s release. Elsewhere, electronic elements take more prominent roles: ‘Better (For Esther)’ weaves between more purely acoustic and electronic sections adeptly before transitioning into the most electronically driven song of them all in ‘On Luxury’. There are no weak songs here. Overall, the range they run is much broader than what one would find on Civilian or Shriek considered in isolation from one another.
A wide range of styles housed on a single record has, for many artists, been apt to harm consistency (or at least coherency). Granted, the band has stated that this is not their fifth LP: the manner of its genesis is enough to guarantee the truth of such a statement. Hence, inasmuch as coherency and consistency are (or are not) present, such qualities are not to be expected in a release of this kind. And yet, for all the danger that compilations of this sort might pose, Wye Oak manage to circumvent it. The record keeps a certain flow, a certain progression, placing itself neatly in the middle of their previous two records. A hole is filled, if you will, between two starkly contrasted pieces of their Canon. A service is done to Wye Oak’s mounting legacy as a whole.
We will see what the true fifth LP brings, if and when it emerges. For now, Wye Oak fans should be very pleased to have Tween in the interim.
