October is the month of all things horror, with Halloween as the capstone to it all. Music for the season is your standard fare of organ kyries, wicked laughter and shrieks of terror.
But what if you wanted something different?
Something new?
Something to give you a real scare?
Enter Will Wood: a modern-day master of the unusual and morbid. As confusing as his songs are to untrained ears, his past is equally shrouded in mystery to people wanting to get into his music; to that end, some insight is welcome to get you to know someone who will get you kitted for the fearsome festivities of the season.
To answer this question, we must understand that Will Wood is an enigma. He’s someone renown for refraining from social media, fictionalizing elements of his life and going into live performances and interviews as characters or personas. But in this confusion, there’s still some truth we can ascertain from the many interviews he’s done.
In one interview with The Round About, he speaks about an episode of hallucinations at age 13 or 14, which facilitated his interest in writing music.
He was inspired by members of the avant-garde like Bobby Venton. His train of thought is very unique, in that before live performances, he uses images and sounds and their symbology to prepare himself.
He owes that way of thinking to his history of mental illness and drug addiction, something he’s very honest about and often incorporates into his songs.
In an interview on Late Night Show with James Nuzzo and Eric Dargis, he recounted listeners calling his band, Will Wood and the Tapeworms’, similar to Jimmy Buffet, citing inspiration from old French pop artists like Edith Piaf or Lavian Rose. Through their touring around the tri-state area in towns like New Brunswick and Apsbury Park, they built up enough support to release two studio albums and a live album. The main one we will be discussing is SELF-iSH (2016).
SELF-iSH gained many listeners when it was released and still has many today. The opening track, “SELF-” is a tonal misdirect with Will alone with a sentimental piano backing track.
The next track, “2012,” twists the piano in a more mystic direction and brings in a strong brassy drive as he recounts how he forgot the entirety of 2012 with a jazzy jaunt. Cottard’s Solution begins as a wistful piano ballad before building and bursting into a wild, almost manic rock charge with grating vocals and an electric guitar joining the fray.
From there, the titles start becoming more absurd. “Mr. Capgras Encounters a Secondhand Vanity: Tulpamancer’s Prosopagnosia/Pareidolia” takes an insidious twist as a quiet, synth-y opening gives way to a song with vocals which many listeners enjoy.
Any reprieve between verses is underscored by this dancing energy, an energy carried along by “The Song with Five Names a.k.a. Soapbox Tao, Checkmate Atheists!, Neospace Government and You Can Never Know,” and “Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In!”
“Dr. Sunshine Is Dead,” the most listened to song of the album, opens up with a short drawn piano that was stylized with tango. The song contains a symphony of various instruments that many music lovers enjoy. The album closes with -iSH, complementing the opening track by carrying on the same placid piano but with more outspoken vocals.
After SELF-iSH, Will crowdfunded his next album through Patreon starting in 2019, releasing in 2020 as The Normal Album as a standalone work. The standout songs on the album are “2econd 2ight 2eer (that was fun, goodbye.),” “Laplace’s Angel (Hurt People? Hurt People!)” and “Memento Mori: the most important thing in the world.”
Though, that’s not to discount other songs like the sappy opener “Love Me, Normally,” which degrades as Will’s vocals become gravelly as the song goes on.
“2econd 2ight 2eer” takes listeners on a whirl with dancing brass and a peppy piano that breaks into a scatting solo which builds up into the outro. The tempo of the song leaves the listener in a sense of unease, perfect while Will entertains us with how he chose being off the norm and insane to society over living normally. Yet, by the end of the song, Will expresses his desire to be normal again by bidding his belief and the song goodbye.
Differently, the next song on the album, “LaPlace’s Angel” opens with a dark, brooding mood, notable with the fact the music video contains stop-motion animated human remains. Normally, Will uses every instrument he can to create a wall of noise to attack the viewer. However, in this song, he breaks it up piecemeal to let each instrument come and go as needed. The brass repeatedly bears down on the listener, and a sinister drum line intensifies with each verse until it runs through the bridge of the song joined by clapping woodblocks and a treefrog’s croaking.
“Memento Mori,” the last showcase song of the album, is a celebration of life in death. Yet instead of trying to apprise the moments that make it worthwhile, it highlights the insignificance of life because of the inevitability of death, as well as the advance of time and the scale of infinity.
All themes are set to a sauntering, almost casual tune that explodes with the final verse in his usual manic manner.
Fittingly enough, Will’s discography got diffused after this with his next two albums, “In case I make it” and IN CASE I DIE:, after “reinventing” himself, per an interview done with The After Hours Review in 2021. Such a change was felt in his music as the chaotic charges of brass and strings left in favor of a mellow mix of piano, strings and drum.
It’s music not to jam out to, but to relax.
Exit Will Wood, a man of mystery and a long legacy on the alternative music scene, one which we can take from for Halloween festivities as it approaches.
Stay weird, Forest Hills.
