The A.V. Club is the first two bring you two news items about one of our favorite musicians, Jenn Wasner: Most pressingly, the Wye Oak frontwoman’s Flock Of Dimes project has a new label home and a record in the works. The electronically oriented act has signed to Partisan Records, joining a roster that includes Craig Finn, The Dismemberment Plan, and Wasner’s past A.V. Undercover collaboratorsSylvan Esso. Partisan will release Flock Of Dime’s self-produced LP later this year; until then, enjoy this dreamy 20-second teaser.
Fans who want more of the teaser’s six-string keening and hypnotic visuals don’t have to wait for the album’s release. Instead, they can pick up the JW-1, a new signature guitar from Reverend that’s splashed in the “Optic Interruption” pattern designed for Wasner by textile artist April Camlin. Commemorating The JW-1’s release, Wasner has written an essay about how playing guitar opened new creative avenues for her, even as it exposed her to the unintentionally patronizing, “This chick shreds!”-style reactions. Such impressions led her to compose Wye Oak’s fourth LP, Shriek, without the instrument she’d come to be associated with, though she states:
It was never my intention to “abandon” the guitar—the instrument that introduced me to my own creative impulses. But, of course, marketing your music to the public is like playing a real-life game of telephone—all of your complex and nuanced ideas get reduced again and again until they’re an easily digestible shell of their former selves.
