The Los Angeles-based Wand has made a name for itself with an expansive live show which deploys an amalgamation of dissonance, heavy and blissful rock. Now, for the first time, they offer that experience via a double live album titled Spiders in the Rain which was captured on their California tour in January 2020.
Promoting the recent release of Laughing Matter, the band Cory Hanson, Robert Cody, Sofia Arreguin, Lee Landey, and Evan Burrows, decided to kick off this live set with two of those offerings. “Hare” starts as a spacey instrumental, setting the stage for what is to come with a growing sense of tension, leading directly into the feedback-heavy rocker “Wonder”. A solid opening pairing but unfortunately the vocals are buried as the band drenches “Wonder” with fuzztone, slight distortion, and vibrations.
Levels improve as the slowly wandering build of “Plum” uses clanging piano and squirrely guitars to construct an awkward angular sound. While the first few tracks are interesting, things aren’t all that special, until the band unleashes their live rendition of “White Cat”.
What is a four-minute psych-rock, repetitive effort on Plum, expands into a twenty-minute sonic journey that delves into glorious aural pastures. Sputtering to get started the song slams with noisy rumbles, growling, receding, reverberating, growing, and swelling to ominous proportions until around the fifteen-minute mark. Yearning Thom Yorke-like vocals return to discuss an old white cat living in California, wrapping up the incredibly adventurous rock outing.
Things take off from here as gorgeous guitar lines color the fuzzily soaring “Evening Star” before the band once again stretches out to over eleven minutes with twinkling piano, off-kilter groove, looping hypnotizing rhythm, and a weaving finale on “Blue Cloud”.
Bright guitars and a dance-ready drum beat support “The Gift” which is wrapped up in a meaty guitar solo climax. Heavy punk and squeaking/pummeling bass coalesce into a successful combo of noise-rock/dream-pop on “Self-Hypnosis”; this combo of genres is where Wand really stands out as fresh innovators.
The double live album wraps with a return to the band’s first album as “Melted Rope” is a sweetly warbling Smashing Pumpkins-sounding number to close and cleanse the palette. Wand is most at home onstage, and Spiders in the Rain does a proper job of delivering the group’s unique mix of noise/psych/jam/shoegaze/alternative rock to those who have yet to experience them in concert as well as those who want to relive the majesty.
