Listen: Wilder Maker - "Closer To God"

photo by Keegan Grandbois

When Brooklyn rock pop outfit Wilder Maker released their excellent "New Streets" 7" early last year, I was thrilled by the prospect of new music from them. Though they had maintained consistent released in the form of their Everyday Crimes Against Objects of Desire which they released in three separate parts, when you come across a band as good as Wilder Maker, every release just makes you all the more eager for more and Gabriel Birnbaum and co. don't like to disappoint. While my real initiation to Wilder Maker's music came in the form of their particular excellent brand of longform songwriter, they've since established that they're equally capable at writing shorter, catchier numbers rooted in a pop element without sacrificing neither their experimental edge nor their mischievous gleam in their eyes.

"Closer To God", the first single from Wilder Maker upcoming third full length album Zion, finds the band trading the breezy, nonabrasive stylings of "New Streets" for a much more ramshackle number. Despite its name and its casual grooves, "Closer to God" is probably Wilder Maker at its more rugged as its subject embraces the chaos of city living pretty much with a debaucherous descent into the city's bevy of easily attainable vices. Birnbaum and Katie von Schleicher's oft-repeated chorus "Closer to God, everyday I get closer to God" achieves the sort of tongue-in-cheek irony of that one friend who always swears they're moving out of the city but never really goes anywhere. Despite highlighting its various faults, "Closer To God" functions as a sort of love letter to city living, as each of its universal and multitudinous assaults is delivered with its own sort of reverence. You're willing to suffer for the things you love, and Wilder Maker essentially grant the protagonist of "Closer to God", a pious allegiance to the city and its frenetic energy not unlike Ancient Greece's worshipers of Bacchus. 



Zion, the third full length record from Wilder Maker, out is July 13th on Northern Spy Records. You can pre-order the album now.