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Desolation Wilderness
Filed Under Featured
The sound of Desolation Wilderness is a collage of punk-rock ethic and dream pop sound layered between postcards and pictures of uncertain date. Free your mind of desolation and forget about wilderness, unless your idea of wilderness connotes a happily ambivalent vagabond. The music of this Olympia, Washington band is a beachy-keen flash of dreamy ambient-pop that’s a little retro and more than a little happy-go-lucky. The sound of Desolation Wilderness echoes back like the voices in a canyon, like the mind of a boy becoming a man with a lot of summer memories flashing through a world of new experiences, all nicely streamed to pique your interest and perk your ears.
The Olympia band was started by songwriter Nicolaas Zwart, and the music’s topography reflects his rolling memories and past. His love for mid-century American literature chimes through the songs, John Updike and Thomas Ford swim through the music in a “really obscure way,” he says, “It’s there through the lyrics, the feeling through the movement.” The panoramic fantasy of the real Desolation Wilderness that borders Lake Tahoe in California, near to Zwart’s childhood home, is reflected in the band’s ambience. The topography of the band’s music lazily follows the geography of lakes and mountain vistas and meets Updike somewhere upstream in the retro haze wafting amid what Zwart calls his “punk-rock ethics.” “It’s where the sound does not drive [the music],” he explains, “The morals and ethics do.”
Desolation’s next full-length album is scheduled for release in August. They’ve offered a tasty nibble to hold you off till then in the form of their advanced single No Tomorrow, just released last week. You can also download gems streamed with cameo appearances of friends like Ashley Eriksson and Eli Moore of LAKE and Shelby Turner (now Desolation’s bass) of Sundance Kids from the archives of Daytrotter.
Molly is a freelance writer and a recent graduate of New St. Andrews College with an interest in postcards and goldfish. She interned for The Loop 21 and keeps - sporadically - the blog A New Amsterdam.
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