The Streets Like Beds Still Warm

Description

New York-based band Wilder Maker delivers a dense, strange, and narrative album with The Streets Like Beds Still Warm, hovering between dream and reality. Conceived as the first part of a conceptual trilogy, the record follows the nocturnal wanderings of a solitary narrator from dusk till dawn. Gabriel Birnbaum, the band's principal songwriter, speaks of an "overall formal asymmetry, like dream logic" — and that's precisely what one feels when listening. Between obscure bars, hospital corridors, and deserted alleys, the album unfolds a film noir atmosphere. Birnbaum readily references those detectives who decompose throughout the story, their physical state mirroring their internal deterioration. Carried by his deep, weathered voice, in the vein of a Bill Fay or a non-imitative Tom Waits, the album conjures almost cinematic images: a flickering neon sign, a half-empty glass, a hastily scribbled napkin. Musically, the band draws as much from Brian Eno's ambient work as from the avant-jazz of Anna Butterss or Jeff Parker. Textured guitars, ethereal saxophones, and chiaroscuro drums support a dreamlike, hypnotic, intensely human narrative. The Streets Like Beds Still Warm is an elusive, captivating work, and undoubtedly destined to become a cult classic in its own way in the years to come.