Ah, wyenra, increasingly one of the most interesting legacies in idol. For the uninitiated, picture this: An idol group rises to mid-range prominence over a decent duration together, then does the idol thing and disbands, but immediately rising from that is a cooler, smarter and altogether more earnest self-produced indie project that does what it whats, presumably how it wants, and improves on the whole package. It’s like a fairytale!
That’s the nutshell version of how wyenra came to be, you see. I’ve enjoyed them going back to the very beginning, but in a hit-or-miss way, given that whole “do what they want” thing doesn’t always align with “what Maniac likes” or even “what the virtual persona of Homicidol Maniac likes.” And that’s fine! Artists do not exist to please me. This one from the other day, though? I love it as much as I’ve ever loved anything from wyenra, and there’s no way that I was going to do anything but hold it up and demand that you love it, too.
For a website that purports to be about the hard side of idol, you think, you guys sure do get into some not-hard stuff pretty often. And that’s very true, friend, but I would direct you conceptually toward a closer examination of things like “hard” and point to such stylistic metamorphoses as pop punk and post-rock and all flavors adjacent to idorock as evidence that “hard” can mean a lot of different things, and beginning down a path (say, “grindcore”) can lead one to very interesting places as tropes and conventions twist and turn.
And, by wyenra standards, is a pretty rockin’ tune! I’ll be 100 percent and confess, predictably, that I’m personally won over by that lead guitar lick and the piano dueling with it for attention, to say nothing of the (very nice) vocal melody. There are times when I hear a wyenra song and think, I like this, but in the same way that I like Perfume, and will therefore not make a big deal out of it; this, on the other hand, is what I look for in artful takes on modern rock, via idol, and here, you jerks, I hold it up for your enjoyment!
Wyenra’s “currently” on a big ol’ tour, and I use the quotes because it’s not that many dates in that many places, but it’s running through December and started the other day, so it counts.
