It’s very difficult to listen to the debut album from Strange Wilds and not think about Nirvana. As a punk rock trio based out of Olympia, Wash. signed to Sub Pop Records, the band can hardly escape the comparison, but the tendency is all the more irresistible given how closely they mirror the sound and aesthetic of Nirvana's earliest work. All of the key elements are present within the first 30 seconds of the opening track "Pronoia". A spongy, clean guitar sound, punched up with overdrive, thickened with a chorus pedal and a burbling up-tempo bass riff packaged in the standard loud/quiet/loud framework. We’ve all tasted meals made from this particular recipe before.
Subjective Concepts isn’t a bad record. It's well-produced, and the band clearly has a vision for the sound they want: The hard thwack of the drums sounds great, the bass keeps things punchy and taut, and the alternating clean and massively fuzzed out guitar tones are varied enough to keep things interesting. The problem is, their vision feels a little too clear, and far too often, you can almost hear the names of the bands—Sleater-Kinney, Mudhoney, the Melvins, and of course Nirvana—echoing in the heads of the band members as each song plays through.
There are a few times when the overall dynamics of the song seems to get away from them. Singer Steve Serna has a tendency to slip into a speak/scream reminiscent of mid-'00s screamo bands like Asking Alexandria or Saosin. In those instances, like on "Pareidolia" and "Egophilia", the choruses become indecipherable battering rams that bludgeon the skull. Alternatively, "Autothysis" is perfectly understandable, but completely flat in the way it’s delivered; a monotone voice without any hint of insecurity, anger, or resentment drolly questioning an unnamed person "do I look like him/ I bet I do, I do" over and over again.
The moments where the band breaks away from the expected become the real highlights. "Lost and Found" is the mostly oddly paced song on the record, featuring a genuinely weird, plodding drum break accented by random guitar stabbings before kicking into a screeching bridge section and flowing back into the chorus. Ten songs into an album where every dynamic shift feels like a bus arriving on schedule, the wrench thrown into the machine is a welcome reprieve. "Don’t Have To" is another gratifying mix-up, where the band dives past their late '80s/early '90s Pacific Northwest fixation into the foreboding tones of early Black Sabbath.
In each case, the break from uniformity underscores how good Strange Wilds are at mimicking a specific sound, and how dutiful they are in doing it. They are a powerful outfit, and Subjective Concepts is cohesive and fierce. But there's a fine line between "influenced by" and "outright derivative," and Strange Wilds chip away at it with each hit of their stomp pedal.
