Pitchfork

In a world where Lungfish, Fugazi, and PiL didn't exist, Wilderness would sound like nobody else. No deductions for derivativeness, though-- it's not as if those bands invented cascades of spindly guitar and world-weary dread. After being active in Baltimore but nationally latent for some time, Wilderness made a name for themselves last year with their dreamy debut album and tight, minimally dramatic live performances. You really haven't lived until a man in a domino mask has rubbed a microphone on your nipple while menacingly deep waves of stately post-punk crest and crash behind him.

Like its predecessor, Vessel States is at once lush and brittle; James Johnson's weirdly hearty geriatric wheeze (kind of sounds like Walter Matthau being asphyxiated) gutters and flares on a pyre of wiry guitars and booming, atmospheric percussion. States is even more reticent than the self-titled debut-- measured and serene, almost lackadaisical in its unhurried progression, its esoteric screeds against the late-capitalist regime mete out their frissons like time-released capsules. As a result, the album is less immediately memorable than Wilderness' prior work, but its glittering suspension of pensive melodies and resounding rhythms is just as fine in the long run.

Like most songs on the album, "The Blood Is on the Wall" is imposingly stark, moving at a measured and deliberate crawl. Against a weightless wash of cymbals, the guitar picks out a sinuous melody as Johnson strategically unleashes his phlegmatic howl. There's a caesura at the three minute mark, then the drums drop into place and the guitar straightens out into a rigid lockstep. The shift isn't overly pronounced and shouldn't scan as so cathartic, but in the context of Wilderness's economical idiom, it's practically explosive. "Beautiful Alarms" is an early standout, with its silvery tracers of guitar and fat, descending bass line; it's an exercise in effervescent stasis until it rides out on a series of tiny decrescendos. And "Fever Pitch" recalls the terse, low-lying slither of Polvo, its serpentine melody sidewinding through clouds of understated dissonance.

Lyrically, Johnson is a grave as ever, repetitively reeling off solemn almost-non-sequiturs about "immortal amortality" and the "death verses" that equal "entertainment." You generally can't make him out without the lyric sheet anyway. I think I liked "Beautiful Alarms" a little better when I thought it was a post-punk poisoned valentine. "Those beautiful alarms/ Historical coincidence/ As history disappears" is slightly less endearing than "Most beautiful eyes", which is what it sounded like to me. But Wilderness isn't a band that's out to please; they minimize or omit the musical cues that tell the listener how they should feel at any given point in a song. Like the literal wilderness, Wilderness is utterly indifferent and has the potential to bore people craving more ostentatious entertainment, but rewards patient observation.