The new album from Brooklyn-based Wilder Maker is the first in a planned trilogy, taking the listener on a long night through the city, but only up to around 1:15 am, leaving room for further developments in the second and third parts. Gabriel Birnbaum, the band’s vocalist and principal songwriter, is hesitant to refer to it as a concept album. The Streets Like Beds Still Warm follows “an overall formal asymmetry, like dream logic”, he explains on the band’s Bandcamp page. Getting caught up in the conceptual pull of this fascinating new record isn’t entirely necessary – the sonic atmosphere of the record is enough to keep anyone’s interest piqued. It’s a beautiful, odd, moody selection of songs.
While previous Wilder Maker albums, such as Male Models (2022) and Zion (2018), expertly follow the lines of indie rock and power pop, the new record seems more in line with Birnbaum’s Nightwater project, a series of mysterious, lo-fi cassette recordings. With the full complement of Wilder Maker present – Adam Brisbin, Nick Jost, Sean Mullins, and Birnbaum, as well as “perennial collaborator” Katie Von Schleicher – the new record’s deep, quasi-experimental dive into a city’s nightlife clings to an irresistible noir aesthetic. The group edited the improvisations into more concise pieces and then wrote over them, creating fully developed songs.
Opening with the gentle, chugging “Strange Meeting with Owls”, Birnbaum’s warm, gruff croon sets the scene alongside fuzzy, low-key instrumentation, giving off the distinct feel of wandering nighttime city streets. Joseph Shabason’s breathy saxophone squeals introduce a new element on “Skewered by the Daystar”, much like Cole Kamen-Green’s trumpet on the closing track, “Sea & Swimmer”, which, combined with warm electric piano, sounds uncannily like a Brooklyn lo-fi take on In a Silent Way. Will Shore also contributes vibraphone on several tracks, adding more depth to an already highly imaginative-sounding album.
The experimental nature of much of the music here often feels like Wilder Maker has slipped into another world, such as on the woozy “Atlas on His Day Off” or the field recordings of “Secret Weather”, and the short run times of pretty much all of the songs here (17 songs over a 38-minute run time) guarantee that musical sub-genres are varied and plentiful. Above all, the songwriting is uniformly stellar. Despite its somewhat avant-garde underpinnings, “The Moon Says” is a gorgeous, minor-key folk treasure. Likewise, “Demon Confrontation” harbors a leering, low-key funk vibe that suits Birnbaum’s world-weary baritone perfectly, with rich atmospherics that Tom Waits would likely approve.
The Streets Like Beds Still Warm is, in Birnbaum’s words, “the inverse of the typical songwriter record”, as the dreamy nature of the music, culled from improvisation, is notably set apart from Wilder Maker’s contemporaries. The record beautifully drifts in and out, and, like its protagonist, seems unconcerned with deadlines or run times, simply walking the streets and taking whatever characters or adventures come to mind.