Wild Pink
Dulling the Horns
FIRE TALK
Four albums in, Wild Pink’s John Ross had arrived at the point in the life of any songwriter where themes and throughlines could be easily gleaned. This is as true for our external interrogation of his lyrics as it is for Ross’ own internal scrutiny. As a purveyor of long, probing songs, Ross has made a habit of turning over every rock and examining every forgotten crevice, smoking out demons and angels alike, always with a sense of wonder. His latest record, Dulling the Horns, is no different. “I’m always searching,” he sings on the album’s opener and first single, “The Fences of Stonehenge.” But he isn’t bragging—in fact, for the first time in his growing discography, Ross sounds downright exhausted.
Wild Pink has taken slightly different forms over the course of the project’s growing discography—from the synthy Americana of Yolk in the Fur, to the wide-open landscape of A Billion Little Lights, to the sparse melancholy of ILYSM—but there’s alway been something innately epic about Ross’ music: big ideas presented as such. That isn’t missing from Dulling the Horns, but the approach is almost inverted, allowing for a hint of absurdity as he goes so far as to call himself stupid for expecting the pearl of wisdom to ever enter his grasp. When Ross imagines for himself the total clarity that could come from a life of unending devotion, referencing such zealous purists as David Koresh and the Heaven’s Gate contingent, it comes with less of a scoff than an envy of the blissfully naive. When the song takes an abrupt shift, we enter a more opaque narrative of a criminal named Lefty and his Faustian FBI bargain. Where these stories overlap is unclear, but that ambiguity might just be the point, echoed in the final deadpan line: “What is my life?”
That kind of knotty storytelling has always been a staple of Wild Pink records. The Washington Bullets, rented e-bikes, “long-ass German words,” and Dracula’s Catholic upbringing make appearances on the lyric sheet this time around, but something most of these songs do have in common is where they eventually end up. While Wild Pink has never been a solely acoustic affair, there’s always been a lightness to the instrumentation, a focus on the negative space with lush arrangements in place of fiery crescendos. Dulling the Horns takes a decidedly different approach, embracing chunky, feedback-laden chords and adopting the signifiers and attitude of a much purer rock record than Wild Pink has ever produced. Almost every track eventually climaxes not with a soaring chorus but with Ross ceding the stage to a rollercoaster of fuzzed-out guitars and thudding rhythms.
For all the playful non-sequiturs sprinkled throughout Dulling the Horns, the central tension seems to come from Ross’ battle between complacency and contentment. Lately he’s talked a lot about his cancer diagnosis, and that understandably left him more than a little drained. Part of the album’s more abrasive, live-band sound can be attributed to a desire to simply let go of perfection’s stifling parameters. “Every good and bad thing will have to pass,” he sings on “Disintegrate,” seemingly forgoing any sense of preciousness. “If you can’t get along with it, you gotta just get on with it,” he adds later on the aptly titled “Rung Out.”
Whether or not you might miss the quieter intricacies of past records, you can’t question Ross’ commitment to once again probing even just the idea of exhaustion to its logical endpoint. He may be increasingly doubtful as to whether he’s any closer to the answer, but he’s still searching.
