I had been reading a lot of buzz around the Indianapolis band, Wishy, and their seamless blend of shoegaze and indie pop lately. Their debut album Triple Seven was stashed in my queue for later listening. Thursday morning, I browsed through the bands playing in clubs downtown for the free Day Parties, a staple of the annual Hopscotch Music Festival. The schedule app revealed Wishy was playing at a fairly small venue later in the afternoon. I quickly cranked up the streaming and fast-tracked listening to Triple Seven with just enough time to garner an appreciation for the recording before my trek downtown to see them play.
Wishy stays true to their description: “Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music’s semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together.” When I shared this assessment with my son, he remarked that was how most indie bands today could be described. I’m wondering when my 18-yr.-old became so wizened and cynical, but I’m also not sure he’s wrong. For my part, the description reminded me of a band like Hotline TNT. Indeed, at the Wishy show, I spotted someone wearing a Hotline TNT shirt.
My son had class in the afternoon, so we couldn’t get to the Wishy show until just after it started. The venue was packed and the guy at the door let us know he could only let one of us in (fire codes being what they are and all that). Since I was the one pushing to go to that show, I did what any good father would… I asked my son if he would wait outside while I enjoyed the band that I had only earlier that day discoverd I was really into. He questioned what he was supposed to do while I was at the show. I didn’t have the heart to ask him to go to the open-air hip-hop show across the street where you could plainly hear the curses and racial epithets that are such a staple of the genre. Fortunately, our dilemma was quickly solved when someone left the club and the door guy permitted us to go inside.
Wishy’s set seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye. When the band’s Kevin Krauter introduced a song with “this is the song that has the same name as the name of the album,” I found myself yelling, “Title track!” in a hasty attempt to help him articulate. Krauter responded, “Yeah, the title track,” and the band kicked off “Triple Seven,” a slice of Sundays-esque indie pop as dreamy as it is nostalgic.
Following the title track in the album sequence is “Persuasion,” no less glistening in its approach and even more careful in controlling the chaos underneath that could threaten the saccharine sweetness of the song.
“Game” sounds like something from Love Tara by Eric’s Trip, an up-tempo fuzzed-out rocker that features a striking lead guitar line and hushed boy/girl vocal harmonies.
Hopefully, there is enough there to sample and find yourself convinced to check out the whole album. It’s always fun to find a band like this at the beginning of their musical journey.
