A live album is rarely something I gravitate to. That said, the new offering from Wild Nothing held some appeal for me since, having never seen Jack Tatum live, I wanted to see how these songs sounded in a concert setting. Live From Brooklyn Steel, out on Friday via Captured Tracks, is a nice set of familiar numbers from the band, rendered anew by Tatum and crew live in front of an appreciative audience.
"Bend", from 2018's Indigo, here sounds a bit like Bryan Ferry fronting Eighties-era Roxy Music, while the bright, earlier "Live in Dreams" reveals Jack Tatum's real love for synth-pop of the Reagan years. "Nocturne", from the 2012 album of the same name, is stretched out here in this live setting, with the tune taking on a nice buoyancy in this version that perhaps the studio version was lacking. Elsewhere, "Paradise", also originally from 2012, is white boy funk, while "Letting Go" from 2018 reveals debts owed to both Tears for Fears and The Associates. Jack Tatum embraces these earlier forms in such a way that his material doesn't sound like that of some acts who look to the past from a position of ironic detachment. Wild Nothing, as shown by these percolating live versions of album cuts, are an act capable of imbuing these old styles with a lot of contemporary energy and love.
Live From Brooklyn Steel is out on Friday via Captured Tracks.
More details on Wild Nothing via the band's official website, or official Facebook page.
[Photo: Captured Tracks]