Artist: Ignore the Wolves

Artist: Ignore the Wolves

Links: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ignore-The-Wolves/164972926992753

http://ignorethewolves.bandcamp.com/

As a music writer, there's nothing more frustrating than not being able to categorize a band. Not being able to find where it fits in the vast expanse of recorded music. It's for our peace of mind more than anything. We know everything about music. Until we don't.

But usually it's easy. Dig deep, discover what the band sucks at, and make a note of it on the map, 'cause that's not the treasure – that's just the shit burying it. Thusly, by process of elimination, we recommend for the band paths to pursue, and the forks in the road they should definitely double back to reconsider.

But when we discover a band whose artistic heft brings to bear a full complement of colors perfectly shaded to the rainbow, it's difficult to summarize without giving short shrift. So it's better to just list. To identify the moving parts, and how they relate to the whole. This is what we'll be doing here, because Ignore the Wolves is one such band.

So let's break it down. Singer-songwriter Matthew Buist's guitar patterns form deliberate brush strokes well-suited to the DIIV School of Expressionism. More than that, and necessary for a band whose pallet is limited only by the man himself, Roy G. Biv, Buist's vocals are positively chameleon-like. Built to Spill falsetto on a song that picks up where Grandaddy's Just Like the Fambly Cat left off (“This Girl With A Cat...On My Street”). A talk-rock combo reminiscent of the similarly diverse Butthole Surfers (“Relax!”). And even when in the background, Buist blends like The xx on the female-fronted “Willows,” and auto-tunes like Bon Iver on “The Red Moon.”

If you could extract the essence of Ignore the Wolves, it would be the short impressionist pieces guided by expressive guitar, as on “To Cease To Be Seen,” which includes vocals by Mouth Dakota frontman, Justin Wood. But it's the layered, low-in-the mix vocals, and prominent drumming, that create the hazy melancholy most easily spotted in chill-wave genres. (Washed Out's “A Dedication” would be the chill-wave analogue that inches towards this middle ground.) And just like electronica, dynamics and textures make all the difference; in this regard, Ignore the Wolves has it all in “Woodpecker,” with its song-stopping guitar intricacy, and keyboards joining with new layers (:46).

Perhaps most notable is “The Red Moon,” which has Ignore the Wolves getting all conventional on us – or as traditional as you can get with a single-lyric, two-minute song. But Ignore the Wolves “going pop” just means that on this, one of the best tracks I've heard in awhile, the vocal is not blended with several other vocal tracks and buried lower in the mix. Instead, it’s a front-and-center performance by the compelling Anchors vocalist, David Black; and though it's a departure from Ignore the Wolves' norm, “The Red Moon” retains everything we've come to expect from Ignore the Wolves. Pronounced drums? They start the song. Emotive guitar work? Well, the singing stops at :42, and the guitar starts at :43, owning the final minute of this two-minute song.

If the internet fragmented and fractionalized music into multitudinous genres, Ignore the Wolves still hits many of them, even the less-than-guitar-centric ones, making them a music writer's nightmare.

And a music fan's dream.

*** The author of this review, Frank Hill, plays the boobam for the following band: http://youtu.be/tMS73-1kCr8