Dex Wolfe – Lightness
Seward Sound – 23 October 2020
Times of trauma inspire artists like Dex Wolfe, and the result is Lightness, an EP that wasn’t supposed to be his first real release, yet the effects of the pandemic and everything that it has wrought inspired him to change his plans. Wolfe sees things as being in a state oscillation between the positive and negative of human experience. As he sees it, we are in the “process of being in a dark part of the cycle, but being rebirthed in light like we are every day.” That can be somewhat difficult to see from the current perspective, but the logic is there.
Living in a state of the unexpected, Lightning combines the surreal and the frenetic at the same time. Keyboards float in air, while the guitar tends to root things. Lyrics come out in a haze. Sitting on a bridge in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Wolfe watched a lightning storm give everything a golden glow, yet the pedestrians on the bridge didn’t even seem to look up from their cell phones. As he noted, it speaks to the current sense of dislocation in western civilization.
In contrast, Little Car seems more normal with the guitar front and center, and the production seems to be more apparently straight forward. Yet the flourishes of electric guitar, bass work by Pat Keen and the drums of Jack Lussenden help to create something that really wouldn’t work as well in a solo setting. The shades and colors create something larger than the song itself.
Examining the pathway that exists between escapism and self-destruction, Highly Likely reveals how lives can be changed by addiction. The opening is soft and lovely, much like a drug, but slowly something else begins to take over as the song starts unraveling. Amidst the searching, repeated refrain, “Why can’t we be alright?,” everything unwinds in a swirl of confusion. It’s one of those moments where art imitates life in a shockingly revealing way.
Coming out of the confusion, Love Breaks seems almost surreal. Housed in the framework of cocktail jazz, it offers a respite from what has come before, yet at the same time seems like a fitting conclusion. Synthesized trumpets bend as the electric piano creates a counterpoint to the sliding guitars.
Within the space of these four songs Dex Wolfe ends up crafting something with great meaning, not just for these times, but virtually any time. There is no doubt we are living in a state of confusion unlike any that has come before. The only certainty seems to be uncertainty. Lightness offers a way forward, a way to help each other out of the darkness of our current times.
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Photo Credit: Leeya Rose Jackson