Infinite Shuffle

So far, during the few months that I’ve been maintaining this blog, I’ve recounted several different ways that I’ve discovered a new band. Yesterday, I encountered a new one — sitting in the backseat of a poorly ventilated car while driving to the suburbs of Chicago for a holiday weekend get-together.

About halfway into the jaunt, after listening to the new Wolf Parade album, my friend threw in a disc of a band I didn’t recognize. After the first couple dream-pop songs absolutely blew me away, I finally asked who we were listening to — Wild Nothing.

The entire ride home we listened to the disc on repeat while using smart phones to search the web for anything more we could find about the group. It turns out it’s just one guy — Jack Tatum — and he comes out of Blacksburg, Va., of all places.

Seriously, I can’t believe anything besides country or bluegrass would come out of that podunk city. But I digress.

According to a Pitchfork review, before Wild Nothing, Tatum started a couple other projects, including Facepaint, a tropical punk act, and Jack & the Whale, which was your basic, introspective singer-songwriter affair.

But with Wild Nothing, Tatum channels such acts as The Cure, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and, more modernly, The Radio Dept.

As my brother described the music when I told him to look into it, “it’s got that airy fairy sound you love.”

It was “airy fairy” enough for me to fall asleep to it multiple times in the past day. I don’t necessarily have any favorites off the album, but I really loved every song on there.

Here are a couple for your listening pleasure.

Wild Nothing – Gemini

Wild Nothing – Bored Games

That second song is actually the title track of Wild Nothing’s debut full-length album. He’s also released a couple EPs with some solid B-sides. If you go to Wild Nothing’s MySpace page, you can hear a few tracks, as well as a cover of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting”, and you can also check out some homemade videos on YouTube.