There’s at least one song on Still Coming Down that allows us to infer that John Ross has become a father, and it gives his latest Wild Pink album its title. “I used to be pure/ I just try to be good,” he sings, hinting at a quiet collapse of ego. There’s a natural weightiness marking the follow-up to 2024’s Dulling the Horns, whose embrace of baritone guitars steered the band’s sound in a gnarlier direction, but not an ounce of self-importance. Ross is keeping things simple: promoting the engineer who mixed the last LP, Alex Farrar, to the production role, and collaborating with a cast of friends he’s mostly met on the road. Fatherhood did end up having an impact on his process, if not much of the record’s lyrics: he’d stay up an hour or two after his wife and son went to bed and settle into a songwriting routine, putting on a beloved movie in the background. On Still Coming Down, he lets his weary mind drift off yet sounds more grounded and determined than ever.
1. Box Store
The guitars are spiked and scorching from the album’s first seconds, but Ross’ playing is contained; it’s not until Sparrow Smith’s accordion sweeps in that the song really gathers a storm. The lyrics offer a glimpse of a life in motion, memorializing the strip mall where the singer bought his AC and TV before diverging into a critical comparison of ‘90s movie stars: William Fichter, he argues, is “measured and calmer than the other big dogs.” Isn’t that how we’d all like to be perceived in our everyday dramas?
2. Round of Applause at the End of the World
Ross makes both the accordion and harmonica’s second and final appearance on the LP count, firing up a killer hook that weaves together various conspiracies around the assassination of John F. Kennedy. If he’s using movies as a reference point on the opener, here he seems to be recounting the theories of a podcast host before turning it off to confess, indeed measured and calm in his melancholy: “I don’t know what my idea of fun is anymore.”
3. Still Coming Down
The title track is a torrent of feeling unlike anything else on the record, one Ross can only describe by approximation: “Love like rolling thunder.” If “pain’s a loop that follows” is a reminder to self, then “You got a compass right where your heart is, you know what to do/ When you stop eating shit they stop feeding you” scans more like fatherly advice. But if anything is there to prove that this overwhelming force is there for good, it’s the massive sound conjured by the musicians Ross has assembled aside from his main band, from Meg Duffy’s electrifying yet patient guitar to Landon George’s fiddle.
4. Plates Keep Spinning
In the scuffed-up world of Still Coming Down, ‘Plates Keep Spinning’ is what passes for some breathing room, an ambling rocker that gives Ross the space to reconsider his take on the afterlife: “Swear to god I’m gonna be pissed/ If heaven and hell are real places/ If there’s more to do after this.” Not because he’s had enough, but because he likes life just fine, it turns out. The song cruises down this train of thought instead of adhering to a clear structure, letting Xandy Chelmis’ pedal steel offer a taste of the otherworldly.
5. Like Water
The acoustic guitar doesn’t last five seconds before ‘Like Water’ is swaddled in distortion, evoking its titular simile: “Like water good and clean/ From the dirtiest looking pipe you’ve ever seen.” Though it’s technically the most autobiographical track on the album, it’s barely about Ross, who recounts the time a woman who fled Romania after Nicolae Ceaușescu’s execution moved into his family’s basement. (Right in the middle of a track, there’s a section that barely sounds like Wild Pink, too, a Vampire Weekend-esque dance of keys and fiddle.) Yet her story ends up driving home the point he made on the opening track: “If you want to you can leave everything,” he sings finally, even if it’s not always as simple as getting one foot out the door, and then the other one, too.
6. Simple
Ross doesn’t need to strip things down to communicate his newfound appreciation for grounded simplicity, deploying a lot of the same instrumentation that powers the gargantuan title track but making it feel restrained. George’s fiddle may be the nagging voice of trauma, while John Cunningham’s clean keys reveal a hidden complexity in otherwise simple chords. “I got grief that could compete in the big leagues,” Ross acknowledges, content to stay on the sidelines.
7. Dead for a Sec
The album reserves its most high-profile guest, MJ Lenderman, for its biggest outlier; if it weren’t for the tone of Ross’ guitar, accentuated here by a flurry of others, it could pass for a pre-Dulling the Horns track. Adam Schatz’s sax gets a glorious moment in the spotlight. “What will you worry about when you move on,” Ross wonders, leaning into the uncertainty.
8. 500 Is the New 250
The influence of Farrar’s production is perhaps most pronounced on ‘500 Is the New 250’, which veers into downright grungegaze territory. But Ross doesn’t fall into the trap of drowning out his voice, instead quieting the song down to make way for its narrative details. Pissed at the thought of a heaven and hell? Well, “the sky looked pissed” right back at you, or at least our protagonist, a downtrodden guy who bets on his phone and drinks alone. When the wall of noise does reach the point of swallowing the titular line, it’s a pointed conclusion: he’s already lost way more than money.
9. Relaxing, Special Interests
The closer is a kind of full-circle moment on a record that hardly concerns itself with song-to-song continuity, preferring instead to go with the flow. But, having acquired the knowledge of where he bought his TV, here we find Ross laying down and relaxing in front of it; “for a little while,” at least. You could probably hunt down the shows he’s referencing, but it’s the thought he has while drifting off that’s disarming: “Your brain is very kind/ To make you think you’re warm inside/ When you’re so cold/ You’re dying.” It’s enough to reframe your whole listening experience, a gut-punch before the needle stops. Maybe you’ll get existential. Maybe you’ll turn the AC off. Either way, Still Coming Down should linger in your mind long enough for Ross to make another stunner.
