music moots with Gnat ("Taste" by Forth Wanderers)

We are extremely back with Music Moots™, the blogseries where I ask someone to recommend me a song they like, and then I listen to the song and then write a little about it.

Today we have Gnat! Aka the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Natalie Antonia Rezek, who just released new solo music after a stint with their band Dinner With Me. I got a taste of their indie folk single "Fill," released in advance of their new EP it better be perfect (which Gnat calls "an ode to disappointment, unmet expectations, and many forms of desperation") and I will describe it to you now.

Fill, by Gnat

track by Gnat

GnatBandcamp New & Notable Jun 19, 2021

The first minute or so of "Fill" builds a solid base: soft vocals, a precarious chord progression suggesting a psyche on the edge of reason, an extended metaphor about heartbreak and hunger ("I've been choking on every single bite / And I can't find my appetite / But I could eat my body weight in you again"). Not content to ride out that structure as it stands, Gnat packs on layers of gorgeous vocal harmonies until it shimmers. I just looked up "lush" on thesaurus dot com to see if there was any better way to describe Gnat's carefully crafted soundscape, and no synonym will do, so: LUSH!!

Gnat recommended a song for me to listen to: "Taste" by Forth Wanderers.

"This song was my #1 in 2022 but l've circled back to it the past few months and I've found that I really can't get enough of it," they wrote. "My band covered it in college so I got to know it really well—it has this sort of disorienting structure that the whole thing revolves around which, I think, has a real synergy with the subject matter. The whiny harmonies, the drastic dynamics, the sort of intimately violent lyrics...it kind of has everything I look for in an ear worm song: catchy enough to grab your attention and unique enough to listen over and over again. 'Taste' is nothing crazy on any specific level, but to me, it's kind of a perfect song."  

Because there is so much music in the universe, swirling around like cosmic dust and whatnot, I completely missed Forth Wanderers during their period of activity (2013-2019). Which is too bad, I would have definitely liked them at that time of my life (Saturn return ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). The band, who formed when they were in high school in Montclair, New Jersey, put out two EPs, a self-released "mini album" and a self-titled studio debut on Sub Pop, then fell into inactivity after a 2018 tour for that album was abruptly cancelled.

"It has everything I look for in an ear worm song: catchy enough to grab your attention and unique enough to listen over and over again."

Lead singer Ava Trilling wrote about her struggle with panic disorder in VICE a year after that cancellation, highlighting how the band's touring setup was at odds with her own mental health. I just looked at Trilling's Instagram and she's now in the wine world—she opened a wine bar called Rude Mouth in Brooklyn, and apparently used to be the wine director at Nightmoves, the teeny weeny dance club next to The Four Horsemen, which is of course James Murphy's wine bar (it's a wonderful restaurant). It sounds like a more chill and sustainable path. I like finding out about what musicians do when they're done with music, even if I wish musicians could make music forever. A life is a long time, there's a lot of stuff you can do during it.

There's a couplet in "Taste" that rocked my shit: "I can't stand his face / But I like his feel." Such a simple, distilled way of describing a certain kind of romantic relationship, where your wires of attraction and disgust get crossed. When I was single in my early twenties in New York, I remember trying to parse such transmissions from men: textual overtures, demeanors at parties. Were my feelings about these dudes 'complicated,' because I was such a sophisticated metropolitan hoe? Or was I convincing myself to feel a certain way because it would make my life more interesting? Something is better than nothing, was my attitude during a lot of it. Or, looking back, more like at least gristle takes a long time to chew. I don't miss it, but I do like remembering it through fraught indie rock.