Wye Oak ready new LP, playing orchestral NYC show w/ Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Wye Oak and composer William Brittelle will be doing a special collaborative show at NYC’s Symphony Space on February 16. The show will consist of material from Wye Oak’s 2014 record Shriek, performed alongside Metropolis Ensemble, and will feature new, unique arrangements by Brittelle. The two will also be performing their collaborative project Spiritual America with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, described as “a stunning mix of classical, electronica, and rock music.” Tickets are on sale now.
The band’s only other scheduled 2018 appearance is at Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival in April with Built to Spill, Jamila Woods, Julien Baker and more.
Meanwhile, Wye Oak have been working on the follow-up to 2016’s Tween which should be out at some point this year. In a lengthy letter to fans last fall, Jenn Wasner detailed the record’s mixing process:
I’m writing this on a break from the studio where we’re currently working on mixing our next record. Today I’ve had 4 shots of espresso, eaten two sandwiches, and read one excerpt from a book called “The Pregnant Ghost And Other Sexual Hauntings.” I’ve also reached 4,765 compromises and stubbornly refused to budge on a bunch of other shit. You know. Mixing.
The mixing process is a strange beast—no matter how smoothly it goes, there’s a certain inherent grief involved in taking a song from the realm of infinite potential into the very permanent reality of its final state. My hero Arthur Russell would endlessly tweak countless different versions of the same song for this exact reason. It’s hard to let go. But the upside is that, once we’ve gone through this last anxious phase, we can finally make this thing that has been solely ours—YOURS. I wish I could tell you more about it right now but we’re not allowed to yet (though I am *trying* to document the process over on our band Instagram and Twitter accounts).
While Wye Oak haven’t officially spilled the beans about the new album, they have been playing new material on tour. Stay tuned. You can watch the band perform a new track, “Lifer,” from September, and debut Spiritual America with William Brittelle back in 2015, below.
