"In Case I Make It," (studio album) by Will Wood

From Arthurknight 08/10/2022 11:49

I listened to this twice, back to back, while furiously deep cleaning my house during a winter evening. I'm not sure whether that is the perfect way to listen to this album or a sign of insert-your-choice-of-mental health-concern, but it scratched some sort of itch. Wood calms down considerably on this album stylistically, and the music is much more personal and introspective than acerbic or blatantly cynical.

However, Wood still remains mostly impenetrable, so by 'personal' I don't necessarily mean that we get a proper window into the artist, but there is a sense here that – for example – when Wood sings about death, it's not simply to poke fun at it anymore. To keep with this particular theme, as Wood sings in Euthanasia, one can see how we've moved on from someone who has read a bit of Camus to someone who has had to linger on death: "And I know, I know it's not true... There's just no more you... But as long as there's no proof... Then I choose, I choose to believe... That we'll meet in sweet dreams." All up, this makes for a more sincere listening experience, and one that helps maintain attention for the over an hour total listening time.

In other reviews, people have condemned particular songs such as the Fitter Happier homage social media commentary "You Liked This (Okay, Computer!)", as well as other post-modern-esque lyrics that people seem to think critiques toxicity within left-wing and LGBT online discourse. Wood's lyrics sometimes are arguably completely vacuous and pompous in similar ways to – for example – certain Father John Misty songs, but the second point is much less valid. Wood really doesn't have much to say about queerness or dysphoria anymore, and makes a point not to. I think this, along with most of the vitriol surrounding Wood's previous attempts to shut down fan obsessions over his own gender and sexuality is largely bad-faith. However, to not chronically online people, you won't notice any of this so enjoy being blissfully ignorant to it all.