Album Review: Tearjerker - Stay Wild

In today’s every shifting and short attention spanned popular music market place, four years can feel like a fucking eternity.

But also, when you aren’t a part of the usual musical grind of record an album/tour in support of it/repeat process—you tend to work at your own pace.

Case in point is the fuzzy Canadian trio of Tearjerker. I came upon them in the halcyon days of 2011, when I used to have a desk job where I wasn’t expected to deliver so many results to people, and could just browse the endless click hole that is Bandcamp dot com.

Searching “shoegaze” as a genre, I happened upon their 2011 effort, Rare, self-released on limited edition CD-Rs that the band assembled, along with their previous effort (properly released on an actual CD) Strangers. I instantly clicked with their fuzzy, woozy shoegaze meets quirky indie pop aesthetic.

In 2012, they issued a four track EP on cassette, Hiding, and then after reissuing it on vinyl in 2014—they’ve been relatively dormant.

But sometimes you pay to boost your Facebook posts so that everyone that has ever liked your page will see your big news, and earlier in the year, it was announced that Tearjerker had returned with a new full length, Stay Wild, which just finally dropped on Friday.

Expanding on their sound over the last four years, Stay Wild shows incredible growth from the band. It’s still fuzzed out indie pop with the spidery whispered vocals buried low within the mix—but throughout the album’s ten tracks, it walks the line between being somber and being whimsical. It begins with the sunny, driving rhythms of the title track, and slowly weaves its way back and forth between melancholic, reflective pop, and triumphant, “big” moments what wouldn’t sound out of place being used in a emotionally manipulative movie trailer.

While songs like the title track, “Phone,” or “It Takes Time” would not sound out of place getting airplay on a station like 89.3 The Current, it’s really those somber, downcast songs that are the best material on Stay Wild. Over plaintive acoustic guitars, the lyric “Waiting for the fucking world to end,” becomes a powerful mantra on “Parking Lot” as the song builds towards its controlled climax; and then there’s the closing triple shot to the album—the slow motion grandeur and “alt rock” guitar clang of “Obviously Wrong,” the quiet, sneaky grooves of “Perfect,” or the hypnotic power of the album’s final track, “Heavy.”

Stay Wild is a “headphone” kind of record for two reasons—the first being the meticulous production detail. While Tearjerker’s previous efforts were strictly lo-fi affairs, here, the production value has been upped enough to make it noticeable: specifically in the way the percussion hits, and in the way the vocals are just on the verge of being understandable with the way they are folded deep within under the jangle of the guitars or thumps of the bassline.

The other thing that makes this an intimate listen is that while it’s marginally easy to pick out individual songs by name that stand out slightly more than the others, it’s best as, and meant to be, listened to as a whole. Each track connects briefly to the next through background noises—an added layer of depth that the band has always had a penchant for including in their material.

Stay Wild is a big, bold statement from a young band showing incredible maturity in its thought provoking songwriting and dexterity when it comes to blending styles and atmospheres.

Stay Wild is out now as a cassette and a digital download.