With three albums in the bag over the last 12 months, Morgantown-based songwriter, Wade Easy, has staunchly arrived. Earlier this year, the shadow master’s second LP, Sea of Night, wasn’t just the perfect ally alongside some hard liquor and a packet of Marlboro Golds on the back porch. It was your only ally. On Easy’s swift follow-up, Honey Venom, he moves beyond said porch to places where he’s never been before.
While neo-psych inflections and shoegaze echoes are also part of the Wade Easy experience, the songwriter is just as informed by the blues greats. His immediate surroundings, adding further weight to his songs in what crystallises their authenticity.
That “haze from the hills” – an apt descripton that adorns Easy’s Bandcamp page – is rife on Honey Venom, which, c’mon, any album boasting such a title can’t be anything but alluring, right? And the songs live up to the lofty expectations of said title, as Easy exudes new confidence.
These songs not only sink into the groove; they are forever embedded in them. There’s something torn and frayed here. Something rugged and unvarnished, as the remnants of a tortured soul sparkle in the wreckage like shards of glass. The foul distortion of Ey Mama, backed by percussion that hisses and moves like a rattle snake in slow motion.
The ringing distortion leaks into Tomato; a love song delivered from dark milieus. Easy, professing to “take whatever is wrong away”, with a delivery so soft that he’s almost purring into the microphone. In truth, it’s something that could have been on Bravery Repetition & Noise.
Wade Easy - Honey VenomUnlike Hot Honey, which is arguably the best song Easy has written. Each verse, building into a crescendo that parts the campfire flames. It exposes the majesty of Carl Saff’s mastering, which is one of the interesting subplots in Easy’s story so far. The regular gun for hire, harnessing the bristling energy between the many layers of sound.
In saying that, Easy knows how to dial it down, too. The hushed roadhouse blues of Pirate of Sand, held together by an icy pulse (“I saw it in the sky / I saw it in the eye / I saw it in the light / The world is not alright”), while the wandering almost two-tracks-in-one, Reverie and Strange, give Honey Venom the contrast its title suggests.
On the droning trio of Low, Venom and Stung, Easy takes his greatest leap yet. Crafting the kind of flinty folkgaze tailored for a Jim Jarmusch film, Easy occupies the space between hypnotic, sun cracked essence of Earth and the drug-inspired dirges of the filmmaker’s own band, Sqürl,
It’s this all-encompassing nature that makes Easy’s third long-player his finest yet. Effortlessly shifting from Sea of Night and Sleeping With the Sun On before that, Honey Venom is a potent mix of outlaw Americana and neo-blues, making Wade Easy, indeed, the real deal.
Honey Venom is out now. Purchase from Bandcamp.
