- ADRIEN LEAVITT
An upswept city in fog passes by quickly outside the windows of Wishbeard’s songs. Bryn Santillan’s taut, glinting guitar patterns move the vehicle out onto rails from a centered station toward the end of a line. Dream-pop varietals of gazing—both shoe and math—factor in. There’s a shock-absorbed velocity to their music. Jude Miqueli’s drums and Brighton Kenoyer’s bass evenly drive the impetus of their equation. Santillan’s vocals are far ahead, shrouded in reverb as a higher-register Chan Marshall. Lighting the tracks, showing the way through the night, are Stranger IT genius Erin Resso’s ’80s-lit headlamp synths. This past September, the Seattle quartet recorded an EP, It’s All Gonna Break, with Aaron Schroeder at BLDGs. The songs were mixed by audio archon Erik Blood and mastered by Adam Straney. With it, Wishbeard continue their movement out and up. Their sound is forlorn at times, bleak even, but it’s a scenic, symmetrical, and cogitative bleakness that picks up speed in the straightaways. It’s pop heading toward Joy Division if Joy Division had teamed with Vangelis to score the Blade Runner soundtrack. Wishbeard spoke. We were stationary.
Where does the driving, high-velocity element of your sound come from? I hear Blade Runner. Joy Division did the music to Blade Runner, and y’all came out.
Jude Miqueli: When I’m drumming, I feel like I’m driving a spaceship. The turns, the ramping up, easing in, and putting on the brakes. It’s all a series of visions I have. I listen to each bandmate, look at them, and keep driving. I make sure we all land safely.
