Wombo are back. The Louisville-bred trio of Sydney Chadwick (bass/vocals), Cameron Lowe (guitar), and Joel Taylor (drums) return to announce their new album, Danger in Fives, out August 8th on Fire Talk Records, and present its lead single/title track. In addition, Wombo unveils an accompanying “Danger in Fives” music video — helmed by the band’s own Lowe — and plots for their headlining North American, UK and EU tour. Danger in Fives is Wombo’s third full-length record, and marks the band’s first release in over 2 years. In the years since, Wombo have performed globally, fine-tuning and tightening a batch of tracks across countless shows.
Danger in Fives isn’t a reintroduction; it’s a reminder. Throughout the record, Wombo not only enhance their formula, but routinely perfect it. Maintaining the confidence of their last full-length, 2022’s Fairy Rust, Danger in Fives reconnects with the intuition that led their wild experiments on the 2020 debut LP Blossomlooksdownuponus. The elements central to Wombo remain true, and are only strengthened across a near-decade of crafting mesmeric rock.
“See through mind said to me, ‘the danger comes in fives,’” Chadwick cooly intones in today’s opening track, as skittering production gestures toward something entirely irresistible ahead. “Now we all sit in a circle and pass the danger down.” The accompanying video sees Chadwick in a feedback loop of repeating days, each remittance offering slight alterations with every go around. Of the track, Chadwick adds: “’Danger in Fives’ has something to do with loops and cycles and the comfort I get from walking around a peddlers mall.”
To perfect the formula, Wombo first had to tear it apart. Standard practices of writing and workshopping material in their post-war basement rehearsal space were paused, as the band explored alternative writing processes. Even demos that took shape quickly — Danger in Fives standouts “S.T. Tilted” and “Cloud 36,” plus today’s opening title track — were carefully analyzed and adjusted. “We really quickly threw a lot of paint down and it was almost the picture, but we still tweaked it for a year,” Lowe says. The time spent refining ideas allowed Wombo to process and workshop as they lived and toured.
The band’s desire to change their model was in part to “get away from a results mindset, where it’s about producing things for a certain expectation instead of doing it all for the joy of exploring,” Lowe says. This commitment toward artistic exploration led Lowe to capture as many ideas as possible, resulting in over 30 demos he then brought to Chadwick to help pare down. “There were a lot of ones where I was like, ‘This sounds really cool but it doesn’t sound like a Wombo song,’” Chadwick recalls. From those ideas, the two fleshed out basic sketches before bringing demos to Taylor in the basement.The experimentation across Danger in Five’s writing process comes paired with subtle shifts in Wombo’s palette: the welcome addition of digital texture, and drum machine incorporated on a handful of tracks.
On Danger in Fives, Wombo twist another knot into their belt and come out creatively renewed. This pursuit of strengthening their craft has earned Wombo a beloved reputation among their community of independent musicians. Ask any adjacent musician operating today who they’re listening to, and more often than not you’ll hear Wombo toward the top of the list. Throughout Danger in Fives, it’s clear what has made Wombo one of the most respected bands in their class, and it’s thrilling to hear them command new terrain. “I don’t want to be in a band that’s confined to one form of writing,” Chadwick maintains. “Where’s the fun and the creativity and the exploration in that? You have to push yourself and try something new.”
With Danger in Fives underway, it’s never been more unclear what the next new thing might be, or how Wombo may discover that. It’s also never been more exciting.
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