Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
You know what I never get tired of?….loud guitars, catchy melodies, leather jackets and bands that sneer at the camera. WYLDLIFE brings the ruckus! – Andy Shernoff (Dictators)
NYC punk/rock ‘n’ roll band Wyldlife will release their fourth album ‘Year Of The Snake’ on April 17 via Steven Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records.
Album pre-orders have launched along with a bold new single titled “Kiss And Tell”.
Pre-order ‘Year of the Snake’: https://orcd.co/yearofthesnake
Stream the new single “Kiss and Tell”:https://orcd.co/kissandtellwyldlife
Of the new single, frontman Dave Feldman says, “After listening to “Definitely Maybe” for more times than we can count, Sam and I wanted to make a song that was tough and angry but still confident and cool. The lyric “I’d rather be ignored than be adored” was a riff on another favorite Manchester band, the Stone Roses. Obviously we as a band want to be celebrated and have an impact on people’s lives, but most times I just want to be left the fuck alone. WYLDLIFE tends to have a larger than life personality, but most people don’t actually know any thing about us. I’ve said “good to see you” to more people I don’t know than I’m comfortable with.“
“I feel like WYLDLIFE is kind of the biggest outlier band of our time,” says Dave Feldman, lead singer of the fierce four-piece NYC Rock ’n’ Roll machine that continues its stylishly anachronistic upending of Rock ’n’ Roll expectations with their fourth album and boldest artistic statement yet, Year Of The Snake, out April 17 on Wicked Cool Records.
Stuffed with catchy riffs and choruses, charmingly specific lyrics and a palpable love of ’70s punk, glam and power pop, Year Of The Snake is the long-anticipated follow-up to WYLDLIFE’s Wicked Cool debut, Out On Your Block. That 2017 release, featuring their breakthrough hit “Contraband,” made the upper half of the CMJ and NACC college radio charts and was hailed by Thrasher as “Rock ’n’ Roll that makes your heart beat faster and your fists scream.”
All 11 songs on the retro-fueled new album were co-written by Feldman with guitarist Sam Allen. The two are “the Mick and Keef of the band” as bassist Spencer Alexander puts it. Dave and Sam have been friends since age 11 and have been writing songs together for nearly two decades.
“A lot of times, I’ll have a melody in my head, usually with lyrics, and I’ll just have to sing the thing out to Sam since I can’t play guitar to save my life,” says Dave. “I’ll be frantically trying to explain, ‘It should sound like this Stooges song, but with this Oasis song for the drums and this bass line like The Rezillos or whatever. Sam will transform it into something that’s close to what I meant but even better.”
The childhood friends have been augmented for some time now by Spencer on bass and Stevie Dios on drums. Dave sings their praises: “Stevie is like a self-flagellating workhorse. After every take he’ll be like, ‘I fucked that up, let’s do it again,’ when he’s the only one who heard anything. Spencer is super fucking relaxed pretty much about everything in life. He’s a rocker, but he’s even more of a roller.” An in-demand illustrator and designer, Spencer is also the visual genius behind the album’s striking art direction.
The record and its title track drew naming inspiration from 1989, the year in which Dave, Sam and Spencer all were born, and the third most recent year of the snake according to the Chinese zodiac. “We’ve always been crawling for glory, unwilling to compromise and are considered to be mesmerizing while simultaneously dangerous,” Feldman offers, without a trace of venom.
“There may be listeners who think there’s a bit more negative energy or anger on Year Of The Snake,” says Feldman, “but there’s always been a hard truth to our songs. Topics include paranoia, anxiety, bad relationships with others, bad relationships with self, hustling in every sense of the word…but it’s not all good news! I guess the overarching theme is: ‘It’s 2020. Life is obviously fucked, nothing matters whatsoever, let’s party about it.’”
Recorded in late 2019 at Renegade Studios, NYC, home base of Wicked Cool head Stevie Van Zandt, the album was produced by Sam with Geoff Sanoff, the engineer known for his work with Bruce Springsteen, Fountains Of Wayne, Dashboard Confessional and others.
The latest release in Wicked Cool Records’ ongoing partnership with The Orchard as distributor, Year Of The Snake is poised to sustain the label’s momentum on the heels of its 2019 Billboard Heatseekers Top 10 albums by Jesse Malin and The Dollyrots. Both Malin and The Dollyrots are releasing new music via the label in 2020, as are The Empty Hearts, Soraia and more.
Year Of The Snake Track Listing:
1 Deathbed
2 Neon Nightmare
3 Get Well
4 Kiss and Tell
5 Automatic
6 Crime of the Scene
7 Sacré Bleu
8 Year of the Snake
9 Tulsa Superstar
10 Keeping up with C.T.
11 The Falcon
Upcoming shows:
APR 25 WFMU Record Fair
APR 25 Elsewhere- Brooklyn, NY (Record Release show with The Mummies)
JUL 4 Bluebird Theater- Denver, CO (w/ The Havoc, Endless Struggle, Hard Evidence, The Bad Engrish, Zipperz)
JUL 05 Bluebird Theater- Denver, CO (w/ The Havoc, Endless Struggle, Hard Evidence, The Bad Engrish, Zipperz)
