Shadwick Wilde (USA)
Shadwick Wilde is relentless. After passing through San Francisco, Havana and Amsterdam in his itinerant youth, a relatively stable homebase in Louisville, Kentucky, only spurred the singer- songwriter to fill his time with creative projects. Cutting his teeth as a guitarist for a series of punk and hardcore bands, Shadwick began writing his own songs, debuting his work with the now-out- of-print album ‘Unforgivable Things’ (2010) and forming the first iteration of the Quiet Hollers.
After their first album, 2013’s midwestern-rootsy ‘I Am the Morning’, Quiet Hollers worked at a staggering pace, releasing a record every two years, producing charming videos, generating effusive press, and tenaciously touring the U.S. and Europe. This whirlwind of activity resulted in their breakthrough self-titled sophomore album; the sprawling and ambitious follow-up, ‘Amen Breaks’; and swelling ranks of converts won over by QH’s transcendent live shows. This period of breakneck activity is perhaps best represented by the group’s video for ‘Pressure’, which features the five Hollers being summarily flattened by the professional wrestler Kongo Kong, an apt metaphor for a remorseless music industry.
After the better part of a decade, Shadwick tapped out of the exhausting album-tour cycle. Woodshedding in an exceptionally prolific 2019-2020, he amassed three albums of material: a spare solo collection recorded on his Kentucky farm; a set earmarked for Quiet Hollers alumni— 2022’s excellent ‘Forever Chemicals’; and the extraordinary ten songs that comprise his first proper solo album in 12 years, ‘Forever Home’.
Recorded and produced by Ken Coomer (Wilco) at his Cartoon Moon studio in Nashville, TN, the sound of ‘Forever Home’ pays homage to Wilde’s long term residence in Kentucky, but also reveals a portrait of a wanderer (of locales and genres alike). The album’s muscular poetry threads Americana sounds with strong post punk and indie rock influences, nodding to Wilde’s nomadic upbringing in Havana, Amsterdam, San Francisco and Boston.
‘Forever Home’ tries to hold space for the tenderness of life’s gifts– connection, music, nature, family– while also embracing the realities of our fragility; coping with the anxiety and depression of living on a suffering planet, and trying to keep a brave face in social landscape that is rapidly deteriorating.
If ‘Forever Home’ is a housebound respite in Shadwick Wilde’s unflagging artistic journey, it’s a welcome one. While the songwriter has many more lives to live and projects to nurture, he has taken the time to forge the emotional landscape of family life. And while he hasn’t always found easy domestic bliss, he has discovered contentment.
