WILD PINK – Dulling The Horns – LP – ‘Blue Swirl’ Colour Vinyl [DEC 12]

LP – Limited Edition ‘Blue Swirl’ Colour Vinyl.

Do you still believe it? John Ross asks that question after journeying through the wreckage. The genesis of Dulling The Horns goes back to late 2022, when Ross began workshopping new material during soundcheck on the ILYSM tour. Last summer, Wild Pink decamped to western Massachusetts to reunite with engineer Justin Pizzoferrato. Ross decided to record Dulling The Horns live in the room, in an effort to capture Wild Pinks onstage style rawer, grainier. Gone are the glimmering atmospherics and studio affectations of recent Wild Pink outings. Instead, Ross voice is haggard against the humid distortion coating every song.

I wanted to make economical songs, Ross explains. Music that is very much at its core three or four people rocking. If before, Wild Pink took notes from Springsteen and Petty, theyve now entered their Crazy Horse era. On Dulling The Horns, you can hear him rediscovering the fire in real time. Tropes discarded along the roadside, songs pulled from the formative DNA of rock music, all filtered through years of messy fog. There is no answer to these problems, Ross says, having eventually yielded. But as far Dulling The Horns is concerned, theres at least one path forward: Burn it all away, and keep moving. The album was mixed by Alex Farrar in Asheville NC, mastered by Greg Obis in Chicago, IL.

Tracklist:

A1 The Fences Of Stonehenge
A2 Eating The Egg Whole
A3 Cloud Or Mountain
A4 Disintegrate
A5 Sprinter Brain

B1 Dulling The Horns
B2 St. Catherine St.
B3 Catholic Dracula
B4 Bonnie One
B5 Rung Cold