It’s not so surprising when bands that begin in the punk realm push beyond its limitations, nor that they have an appetite for something unorthodox. After the comparatively conventionally punky structures of their previous album Fairy Rust, Louisville, Kentucky, trio Wombo have taken steps into abstract territory. Their third album, Danger in Fives, sloughs off standard song structures for linear journeys not beholden to themes or time signatures.
Frontwoman Sydney Chadwick has moved away from her rock singing style to a light, airy vocal approach. This new style lends itself well to her unique phrasing, dissecting and stretching words at inconsistent syllables so that they better serve rhythms than narratives. Her method also helps her smooth together the lyrics’ frequent odd pairings and wordless vocals cohesively.
This change in Chadwick’s singing also sets her voice as a counterpoint to Cameron Lowe’s somewhat frantic guitar. Using a heart palpitation-paced rhythm as his baseline, the personalities of songs come through in deviations such as the trilling on ‘Danger in Fives’ and ‘Cloud 36’, against the latter of which Chadwick stretches words along one distended breath so that they don’t sound like words at all.
Danger in Fives is largely a collection of short, choppy songs defined by jagged guitars with a particular sharp, scratchy tone. As Chadwick’s vocals mostly aren’t shaped around a pop or rock structure, guitar tends to pull the focus of the songs. On ‘Reveal Dusty’, a very elastic guitar backed by tinny, pin-prick percussion stands in for the chorus. On ‘Neon Bog’, a fuzzed-out guitar solo dragging along a click-clack rhythm makes for a convincing bridge.
But Wombo at the their most conventional make it possible to appreciate them at their most meandering. ‘Common Things’ is an indie rock outlier of sweet vocal harmonies and a crunchy outro that connects them to their earlier work but feels like a separate entity on Danger in Fives. This anomaly underscores the intentionality of their abstract song styles.
They find a sweet spot with the steady chug of ‘A Dog Says’. The song has more breathing room than most, allowing its varied effects on the guitar – at different points, a distortion that sounds uncannily like a brass section and warped swiping – to feel like logical progressions. And unlike many of the tracks on Danger in Fives, Chadwick’s voice provides the structure of a beginning and an end. But within that framework, the song maintains the fluid experimentation of the album, an energy that rolls through with as much ease as excitement.
