REVIEW: Westerman Transforms Color And Emotion Into Sound In New Album ‘A Jackal’s Wedding’
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY KYLEE WIENS ☆
TO BRITISH-BORN, MILAN-LIVING SOLOIST WILL WESTERMAN—music is all about connection. With a rich musical career beginning in the dark days of the COVID-19 lockdown, and a traversal across genres from pop/rock to synth-drenched indie and everything in between, one thing has remained consistent: Westerman’s ability to turn growth and change into sound.
On his third studio album, A Jackal’s Wedding, Westerman creates a rich, all-encompassing bath of colorful textures, natural imagery, and enough space for listeners to breathe. The songs are airy yet supple with subtle pop hooks and sophisticated instrumentation. Inspired by the sight of a spectacular sun shower while driving through rural Minnesota, Westerman is an aficionado at transforming natural environments into sonic landscapes. The key, he said, is in the art of evocation. “It's kind of like explaining how a smell tastes. It's more about the emotions evoked by the feeling of observing and experiencing this thing. It’s about trying to find a way to move through the music.”
The album begins with the cinematic and ascending “S. Machine,” inducing imagery of storms brewing or kinetic energy building. Westerman begins to unsheathe his vulnerability with the cutting refrain “I came to be honest/about leaving” in “About Leaving.” Warpaint’s Stella Mogzawa maintains this energy on the following track, “Adriatic,” where her spunky fills create a serendipitous backdrop to the otherwise melancholic track.
“Nature of a Language” is one of Westerman’s personal favorites on the album. “That's a song that kind of came together in real time when we were up and running with the recording, and it was going quite well. And in some way, I think because we'd hit some kind of vein creatively.” He describes the song as “unadorned,” but that’s part of what makes the track shine. Its stripped-back emotiveness and raw lyrics, “Calling out your name across the bodies on the floor/Things all look the same, do you know the difference?/Won't you understand that it's/The nature of a language?” make the track feel at once elusive and relatable.
“Weak Hands” represents the track’s emotional apex, and a rumination on mortality. Poetic lyrics “It’s bound to fade/it’s how it’s made/jump on my grave, weak hands, embrace” abstract the notion of death, yet it does not become impossible to understand. Instead, listeners are led down a sort of sonic hall of mirrors, forced to confront the meaning around them through the lens of their own distorted self-image.
“You Are Indelibly Where I Sleep” acts as the last lingering raindrops after a long storm, equal parts cathartic and ominous for what’s to come next. Ultimately, the album represents a stylistic shift for Westerman, of which he explains, “These songs were more exposed and simpler than songs that I've done on other records, trying to kind of do something quite unadorned and quite vulnerable in a way”. The change is palpable and reflects the artist’s personal and creative growth.
