There is an intrinsic nomadism in all truly good music. It is the fact that it is tied to no particular location, or situation–just as apropos on a stereo in a living room as in an old car on an empty highway, or some cheap out of the way bar. The songs of The If You Wannas are permeated with this malleability. They feature abrupt changes in tempo from one song to the next, driving Telecaster riffs giving way to carefully crafted slower notes.
Seeing them live one notices the lack of pauses between their songs, and the interaction of their energy and that of the crowd. The energy builds as the show continues, the crowd getting it from the band and the band taking it back again–and halfway through the set it’s easy to imagine these four musicians powering scores of duplexes and split-levels somewhere in the Mid-West.
Their freneticism is what pulls you in, but it isn’t what keeps you. It is the lyrics that keep you. Many of their lyrics are imbued with a deep melancholy, the kind that many of us can relate to–and those that can’t know that someday they will. There is that sadness, that detachment, but there is also a sense of whimsy. And that is what most clearly separates The If You Wannas, the conviction that there is, somehow, redemption in the details, in all of the combined seemingly inconsequential things that make up our lives, and what makes them special is their way of communicating that to the listener.
Chall Gray is a freelance journalist and fiction writer based in Asheville, NC.
