Wild Nothing @ YES, Manchester, 11 Feb

Jack Tatum brings the latest iteration of Wild Nothing to Manchester and continues to make the case for being one of the city's adopted musical sons

Live Review by Joe Goggins | 13 Feb 2019
  • Wild Nothing @ CCA Glasgow

When the venue for tonight’s Wild Nothing show switched from Gorilla to the more intimate YES, there was the strange sense of a homecoming. Normally a move down the capacity ladder would be nothing to shout about, but Jack Tatum’s bedroom-outfit-turned-glossy-80s-pop-merchants might as well be the house band at the city’s newest venue, such is their deep affinity with Now Wave, the promoters that run YES and that have supported Wild Nothing since the summer of 2010, when they were playing to scarce crowds at The Deaf Institute in support of their debut LP, Gemini.

That record, conceived and executed entirely by Tatum on his laptop in his University of Virginia dorm room, has now taken on the status of a minor modern classic judging by the reaction of the crowd to cuts from it tonight; the softly gorgeous dream-pop stylings of Live in Dreams, the handsomely evocative Chinatown and the soaring Summer Holiday – "a song we’ve played every time we’ve been to Manchester" – are all met boisterously.

Elsewhere, Tatum and his five-piece band draw heavily from last year’s pristine Indigo, a synth-pop album so polished that you could see your face in it. Key to this is the inclusion of a raft of saxophone turns from keyboardist and sometime Real Estate man Matt Kallman, who brings brass verve to Bend, takes centre stage for an irrepressibly smooth Whenever I, and totally transforms the 2012 fan favourite Paradise as he holds court during an extended instrumental breakdown that flirts with psychedelia.

That this band is now being spoken of in such ambitious terms as they close in on a decade of existence is proof positive that, despite his solidly retro influences, Tatum is pushing the boundaries with his project’s live iteration. Anybody who saw those formative Manchester shows further down Oxford Road – and there weren’t many of us – can attest to the fact that there have been several Wild Nothings down the years, and none this assured or this sharp. Good things come to those who wait.

http://www.wildnothingmusic.com/