It’s no wonder the first song on Wishy’s debut album was called ‘Sick Sweet’. That’s the dichotomy at the core of the Indianapolis quintet’s music: always infectious, but never without a trace of sickliness. Equally infatuated, jangly, and sublime, their sophomore album, Nature’s Pill, goes out in search of some kind of cure for love’s ailments while venturing out into new territory. In the band’s picture-perfect party world, “Life’s a game where nothing’s out of bounds/ And love’s a circus/ Everyone’s a clown.” This philosophy extends to their songs, which beam out of the speakers like the first thing you’ll want to hear every morning: a little sun-dazed, perhaps dreamstruck, yet eager to get up and running.
1. All the Rage
Kicking off the album with jangle-pop gold, ‘All the Rage’ finds bandleaders Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites trading verses like lovers on different timezones – “Show’s on 10:30 eastern” suggests that even a few hours’ difference is tantamount to heartbreak, breeding not melancholy so much as blissful carelessness. “How many times will love swallow your life?/ In that same breath, the sorrow comes/ So cheaply disguised,” Krauter sings. The song isn’t so effectively deceptive, but it’ll help you wear that smile a dozen times over, tacking on a couple more choruses at the end for good measure.
2. Covergirl
Like the opener, ‘Covergirl’ opens with the protagonist being violently woken up – this time not by the sound of an alarm, but “still running from lust.” Pitchkites takes the lead on the whole song, which leans in a grunge-gaze direction while still somehow supplying sunny melodies, bathed in layers of fuzz that match its impressionistic lyrics.
3. Sensational
Spilling more sunshine over a funky groove Krauter has aptly described as “breeders etienne,” the track isn’t optimistic so much as aspirational: “Now fix that face, your heart might follow,” he sings, either swallowing his own sorrow for the sake of good advice or not as sick of it as he sounded on ‘All the Rage’.
4. Shift
‘Shift’ ends with a delightful voicemail Pitchkites received from her late grandmother upon graduating college, encapsulating not just the music that precedes it but the album’s overarching giddiness. The track mostly does away with specifics, coasting on a dazed atmosphere while keeping things upbeat.
5. You’re Not Serious
Wishy get a bit more confrontational here, expressing frustration through slightly muffled vocals and injecting a nervous edge to the song’s propulsion. They don’t dwell on it, though; it’s the shortest song on the album.
6. Mona Lisa
Brought into sharp contrast is ‘Mona Lisa’, which is hazy and patient, cleaning the record’s sound back up. The singers, too, recenter themselves as they did on the opener, though the emotional distance between two people is still palpable in the lyrics.
7. Lovesick
Revving the engine up for the album’s second half, ‘Lovesick’ is starry-eyed alt-rock perfection. But though it’s equipped with one of the band’s most indelible hooks, a few lines stand out most of all: “Cut the pink out of your hair/ For your grandma’s funeral,” all the more potent following that sample; and “Vindicated and looking for the truth/ You cut your teeth on the currency of youth,” a strong contender for couplet of the year. It just goes to show you can’t brush past Wishy’s lyric-writing so easily.
8. Freak 99
The band swerves into Silversun Pickups territory on ‘Freak 99’, sounding a little less identifiably like themselves. Still, it’s fun hearing them experiment with post-punk tropes; Pitchkites even letting out a shriek while landing on the word “sophisticated.” They’re not taking themselves too seriously, after all.
9. Headscratcher
The track scans as Krauter’s version of ‘Covergirl’: wild and restless with desire, though more direct. The narrator can’t shake cruel or romantic thoughts off his head, so we’re bound to hear them swirling.
10. Blitz
Those who might crave the noticeably more punkish energy of 2024’s Triple Seven will gravitate towards ‘Blitz’, which is pummeling and METZ-like. The album’s optimistic tendencies threaten to spiral out of control as Krauter declares “Disarm your state of mind!” followed by “Just live! Don’t try!” It sounds like staring into an inspirational poster until your eyes burn.
11. Kiss Kiss Kiss
If “Camcorder pointed at me, I’m the controversy” scans like a line off Charli XCX’s Music, Fashion, Film, you’d be surprised to find that ‘Kiss Kiss Kiss’ also sounds like what producer A.G. Cook, in promoting DIIV’s next album, has dubbed “the New Alternative.” It might just be AutoTune doing the work, but this pop sensibility suits Wishy regardless.
12. Party World
The closer, on the other hand, sounds nothing like ‘party 4 u’; it’s classically wistful, drawn-out dream pop. The dream, of course, is some kind of escape: “to my world where life is just a party,” in plain words, or more poetically, a heavenly state of mind that cannot be disarmed. Whatever it is, the band naturally savours the sound of this, the sole moonlit night on an album of sunny mornings.
