NeuFutur Magazine / neufutur.com: WORMWOOD SHARES SINGLE TODAY

Wormwood is an anthemic electronic duo comprised of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Christina Willatt and multi-instrumentalist/producer Andrew Wenaus. Originally from Saskatchewan, Canada, the band is currently situated in London, Ontario. Their sound is perhaps best described by Jim DiGioia of Quick Before It Melts who stated “if 18th century ghosts haunted 21st century dance clubs, they’d probably sound exactly like Wormwood.” The duo’s striking sound combines elements of pop, post-rock, folk, punk, noise, classical, electronica, bebop, avant-garde, IDM, and film sound design. The impetus for the group stems from the members’ ambivalence towards the overwhelming sense of ubiquity and simultaneity in contemporary pop culture: beauty and mystery, simplicity and chaos, pleasure and angst, responsibility and fantasy, group heterarchy and the haunting of celebrity hierarchy. These tensions are expressed in both the form and content of the songs. The result is a combination of melodic lyricism with bursts of rapid-fire rhythmic precision, a conflation of traditional song writing combed through and capturing bursts and bits from the excessive mediascape. This is not simply the representation of eclecticism and syncretism in contemporary recording arts, but rather an affective response to the anxiety and ecstasy of the acceleration of pop art and information.

Wormwood’s debut album Sunfloating (2013) received positive reviews on No Fear of Pop, ChartAttack, Quick Before It Melts, Greyowl Point, The Green Majority, and Open Til Midnight. Sunfloating won the “Forest City Fan Favourite Award” at the 2013 CHRW Local Album of the Year Awards in London, Ontario. The album was included in the Top 30 Albums of 2013 in the Toronto electronic indie magazine Silent Shout, and the song “Leaves Like Lemons” was included on the magazine’s Top 100 Songs of 2013. Their recent EP Microdot, released on Punctum Records, is the first in a series of Microdot EPs. The band is currently working on a second full-length album.