I’ve been a fan of Wild Rivers since their first album was released and “Wandering Child” came up on my Spotify discover weekly. Spotify also reminded me of my affinity for them by telling me “Thinking ‘Bout Love” was my top song of 2020. But, with their latest album “Sidelines” I hadn’t given nearly the same amount of playtime to it. I had thought maybe it was because I didn’t like their new stuff as much, but after a night at Brooklyn Steel hearing them perform it live, my perspective completely flipped and I can’t get enough of the album.
The band sings a lot of songs about breakups, in fact they have an EP titled “Songs to Break Up To” and they prefaced most of their songs by saying, “This song is about a breakup”. That being said, their lyrics never get old and explore the range of emotions you feel throughout a breakup.
Moving on from breakups, their newest album explores the feelings of loss that many young people feel as they move into their mid to late twenties and see their friends growing up. They prefaced their song “More or Less” by saying it’s about feeling more lost as you try to understand more about the world around you.
Apart from the emotional themes and lyrics, every aspect of the show was at a higher caliper than I had expected, from the lights to the performances. Especially amazing are the voices of both Devan Glover and Khalid Yassein as they harmonized through most of the songs. The amount of talent along with how much the crowd sang along left me wondering why this band is not more popular.
And lastly the encore, or the lack of one. Anybody who knows me, knows I hate the charade of the band running off the stage as if they hadn’t planned on playing their most popular song but by complete surprise and prompted by the audience’s applause, they come out and play a few more songs. Apparently Wild Rivers shares my disdain for that because before singing the last three songs they told us that we were at the point they would normally do an encore, but don’t like lying to audiences. More bands should forgo the encore, and more people should listen to Wild Rivers.
