Life isn’t pretty nor is it a cake walk, and Wild Pink are embracing the reality of it all doing its damnedest to wear you down with Dulling the Horn. Unfortunately for life, the Brooklyn indie rockers have figured out the perfect foil in their sound to keep their edges sharp enough to make it through it.

But first, to understand how we got from point A to point B, let’s acknowledge how the band vehicle of John Ross has been experiencing the kind of richly rewarding, widescreen ascent any band of their nature (as well as their listeners) would love to have a taste of since their 2018 sophomore breakthrough, Yolk In the Fur. It was an album dazzled in small wonders because of its humble cosmic Americana spangle. This naturally led to the band going for broke with ample anthemic lacquer of “digital gloss” all over that sound with its 2021 follow up, A Billion Little Lights. Life would then say, “Not so fast!” to Ross soon afterward, unfortunately by posing bigger existential quandaries in the form of a cancer diagnosis. That greatly informed the quieter, minutely-crafted inward looks of A Billion Little Lights‘ successor, 2022’s ILYSM.

So how do you move forward from going through all that, and especially as an artist that has brought their sound as far as they can in all maximalist and minimalist directions? As the classic American guitar rock greats of Springsteen, Petty, and Dylan would surely suggest, you hit reset. In the frame of Wild Pink’s current views on living, it’s being present in the moment which invigorates their fifth full-length into a next chapter where their sound embraces exhilarating, distortion pedal-fueled deep dives into the grit of those highs and lows, the omnipresent lingering questions that come with them, and getting on with it all.

The turn makes Wild Pink sound more electrically embellished than ever across 10 tracks of indie rock with coarse edges doused with squelchy keys and the occasional brass smoke, complimenting the current voltages of MJ Lenderman and Liquid Mike as well as the evergreen loud amp settings of fellow Justin Pizzoferrato-produced veterans Dinosaur Jr. rather than sinking deeper into a dad rock malaise (though, Ross is a new-ish father himself.) For his part, Ross is arguably at his most lyrically based with his philosophical quips on humankind, sports history, Dracula’s Catholic origin story, or the bombardment of tragic news cycles, all which have the ability to bowl you over, or at the very least, make you tilt your head sideways.

Maybe this isn’t where he thought the road was headed for Wild Pink several years ago, but it’s where they’ve found themselves. A twist of fate in the journey, so to speak, and one that has their music sounding more alive in a lived-in reality for it.

Highlights: “The Fences of Stonehenge”, “Eating the Whole Egg”, “Catholic Dracula”

Wild Pink’s Dulling the Horns will be released October 4th on Fire Talk.

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