At a Montclair, New Jersey high school, guitarist Ben Guterl had a crush on a girl. So he sent a demo of instrumental sketches to that girl, vocalist Ava Trilling, who in kind returned them adorned with her own lyrics. Soon after, she became the frontwoman for his band of childhood friends.
If this charming prologue sounds like a spec script for an indie teen movie, believe that Forth Wanderers are kind of like the feel-good movie version of a suburban rock band. In 2014, before they even released an album of music, Lorde tweeted about their songs. While Trilling finished up high school, Guterl and the rest of the band packed up for college. In between homework and keggers, they emailed each other more song fragments, patching them together during breaks. In that time, Forth Wanderers’ handful of records garnered praise from both college newspapers and The New Yorker, (who deemed them “confident and untainted” young stars, naturally). So Forth Wanderers, their Sub Pop debut, feels like the end of the montage and the beginning of something real.
Of course, the reason Forth Wanderers attracted so much attention when they were teens was that their music did sound prodigious. Even as high schoolers, Guterl’s spry and smoky guitar lines and Trilling’s blunt, diaristic lyrics gave the band an urbane sensibility, one that feels not just older in age, but in sound. One of their early songs, “Slop,” had the lazily intricate feel of Built to Spill and the concise, emotional punch of the Breeders. Indeed, the heroes of ’90s indie rock haunt their music, but Forth Wanderers don’t seem interested in pure emulation: Their style feels unmannered; their tales of young-adult frustration would feel cutting and relatable in any decade.
The driving force behind this timelessness is Trilling. Like a natural movie star, she doesn’t just light up a scene, she creates the very circumstances for a scene to feel special. Her first words on the album: “I am the one you think of when you’re with her.” On the page, the line is already acidic, but under the direction of Trilling’s cool, unperturbed delivery, it becomes more than just a clever comeback at a disappointing partner: With her steely voice, she conjures up the entire arc of a doomed relationship. Her bandmates, meanwhile, coax every ounce of emotion and energy from this story, their rhythms taut and athletic. Guterel, in particular, has an audible chemistry with Trilling. His scuzzy chords hone in on whatever mood she’s in, as if they’re boxers moving around each other in shadow play.
The stories she tells—of the many beds she wakes up in, the faces that obsessed her, the bodies she’s tangled up with—capture a kind of grappling adolescence that’s hard to speak, write, or even make art about in a way that’s truthful or interesting. She relishes in unpleasant details, like the blood she draws from a lover’s tongue in the middle of a makeout on “Taste,” a track that in its entirety, with its sour guitars and forceful drums, feels just as cutting as that kiss.
Yet, as visceral as the writing can get, and as tight as the band’s sound is, Forth Wanderers’ songs can melt into each other—both lyrically and sonically. Aside from the acoustic outing on “Be My Baby,” every track is built on the same sturdy arrangement of fuzzy guitar licks and shuffling bass and drums. And since Trilling’s lyrics are, at the moment, confined to a limited range of experience, it can make the album, as a whole, feel like one long run on sentence about the intricacies young love.
Still, there is a vigor to their music that’s not just accomplished, but deeper than they might know. The band inhabits a space that can feel bigger than the sprawling tree-lined streets and byzantine freeways of their local inspiration. Instead, the place Trilling and her bandmates create is more personal, messier, and chaotic. They give musical cues to the growing pains of young adulthood that are relatable but never trite—their songs, like any you might’ve been obsessed with in high school, feel like a mirror held up to the all-consuming triumphs and heartbreaks of your own youth.
