Wye Oak have announced a 10th anniversary reissue of their 2011 album Civilian. The 2xLP features the original album, along with a compilation of unreleased tracks and demos titled Cut All The Wires: 2009-2011. Hear ‘Electricity’, a previously unreleased song from 2009 that inspired the LP’s title, below.
Of the song’s origins, Andy Stack explained in a statement:
After playing “Electricity” in live shows for a year or so around 2009, we made a studio recording but never mixed it, and ultimately decided to shelve the song. And so, it was relegated to the dustbin of time, aka an old hard drive which I did not unearth until 2020 when I came looking for old photos and other memorabilia from the Civilian era. On my old drive, I found a treasure trove of material which we had both forgotten ever existed—original demos, live versions of the songs, and, most exciting, a bunch of fully realized studio recordings from this era which never saw the light of day. On “Electricity,” I was really bashing the drums in a way that I never would now, and I hear that same abandon in Jenn [Wasner]’s singing. The recording has much of what defined the first phase of Wye Oak: an urgent push and pull between chaos and beauty, and a hard-hitting attempt to push out as much sound as we possibly could from our duo setup. It’s not who we are anymore, but I still relate to the old feeling, and I still get goosebumps when I listen to these recordings. Everything old is new.
Cut All the Wires: 2009–2011 Tracklist:
1. Replacement
2. Civilian (Demo)
3. No Words
4. Electricity
5. Half a Double Man
6. Sinking Ship
7. Two Small Deaths (Daytrotter Session)
8. Holy Holy (Demo)
9. Pardon
10. Black Is the Color
11. Ten Fingers
12. I’m Proud
