ALBUM REVIEW: Yearning Heats Up Wilder Woods’ ‘FEVER/SKY’
Rachel Cholst
Posted On March 23, 2023
With two evocative words, Wilder Woods (Bear Rinehart)’s FEVER/SKY captures the duality of lockdown. The sense of confinement with the desire to be free — and using the information superhighway to approximate it — idle in the background of Rinehart’s sophomore serving.
Wilder Woods / Bear Rinehart (photo by Darius Fitzgerald)
Really, this album is a party in a bottle, an ode to the sweaty intensity of old-time rock and roll. Rinehart’s band, the Grammy-nominated NEEDTOBREATHE, sports sinewy electronic sounds — a sharp contrast to FEVER/SKY’s full-throated embrace of acoustics of all kinds.
Producer Cason Cooley centers Rinehart’s expansive, gravelly roar among a luxurious swirl of guitars, piano, strings, horn, and a crackshot group of background singers. The album calls to mind a top-of-the-line studio in LA and a mosh pit — the very experience Rinehart yearned for while writing these songs in lockdown.
Yearning is the core emotion here, and Rinehart makes it sound great. The album opener, “Maestro (Tears Don’t Lie)” finds Rinehart begging a recalcitrant lover to stay. The song kicks off with an irresistible beat, an adrenaline rush of punk rock and old-time soul. The grooves keep coming with “Get It Back” and “Patience.”
The album’s quieter moments, like “Wish It Was Mine” and “Be Yourself” (quiet by no means equates to “intimate”) showcase Rinehart’s lyricism. While his songs primarily use their musicality to the move the listener, Rinehart also carefully builds the mood with well-chosen words that subtly push the listener where he wants to go.
Even in the midst of heartbreak, it’s clear that there is joy in release and healing in music. Rinehart anchors the joyous cacophony in his music with a sense of confidence and empathy — things may be tough for us, but he’s been there, and he’s here to show that it’s all going to be OK. The lyrics tell us our narrator is alone, but the band reminds us there’s solidarity in the struggle.
Wilder Woods’ FEVER/SKY is out March 24 on Dualtone Records.
