Wild at Heart

posted in: Artist Features • Pop

If there’s a benefit to touring 245 days out of the year, living in a van with your two bandmates for most of that time and staying in a remote cabin with the same two bandmates for the remaining 120 days, then that benefit can be heard on Vs. Wilderness by Finn Riggins. The Idaho trio purvey rangy, lo-fi, quirky pop marked by odd time signatures and mercurial arrangements. On Dali, instruments sound as if they’ve been run through Fischer-Price speakers, with the low, cool vocals of singer Lisa Simpson applied to smooth the grit. It’s a playful tune, but Finn Riggins are multiple-trick ponies. Blackrock is anti-pop ” atonal and dark ” while A Whale, A Fish, is a shimmering, haunting, seaside elegy. And while the band’s good at ambitious, beautiful songcraft, they’re excellent at spastic melodies. So put on Wake (Keep This Town Alive) and let the frayed guitars and hyperkinetic drums lure you into the wild.