On Wye Oak's New Direction

Last week saw a flurry of activity and announcements from Wye Oak. The band, originally from Baltimore but now spread across the USA, have announced the release of their fourth studio album, Shriek, on April 29^th and the first track to be released from it, “The Tower”, has been played on various radio stations and podcasts and a video has been doing the rounds online.

Last year, when discussing the new album, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack revealed that it would feature no guitars. This news came despite an August 2012 concert broadcast by NPR where the band debuted 2 new songs, both very heavy on guitar and both astonishingly good. However in the year and a half since then, the band has progressed and those songs seem to have fallen by the wayside.