“wild” is Courtney Nord’s latest album. It’s a melancholic and introspective album with a cinematic quality to it. It’s an album about reflection, transitory periods in life, and accepting life for what it is. A ride. It was written in the wake of a relationship’s end and standing between academic phases, Courtney channels the feeling of being caught between destinations, not knowing where you’ll end up, but embracing the journey anyway.
The journey of this album starts with an insane surprise. The title track is one of the coolest tracks I have heard all year. It starts with a Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar riff, and then vocals are introduced with some kind of psychedelic reverse delay sound, and the melody reflects that opening guitar riff in a haunting lydian sound that is a really interesting modern take on these 70s style melodies. The track then opens up to reveal the grungy sound at the heart of the record.
Following the title track is “in memory of…” A much more cinematic and musically laid back track which serves the melancholic nature of the theme very well. The spaciousness of the track is amplified by the incredible production by Adam Teller, who is also Courtney’s ex-partner. The next song is “Pressure” which has post-rock influences with its dissonant and huge sounding layers of guitars with lots of delays. Amazingly, this song was written in one 24-hour period. Courtney described the experience of writing it as an inescapable creative flow. This was originally written for an indie thriller film but was rejected and repurposed to be a part of this album. Which explains why the lyrical content is a bit different from the rest of the album, but still ties well thematically.
I want to highlight the evolution of the music in the album. After those tracks we mentioned, we start slowly transitioning into a more somber sound with “Light in the dark” and “Little miss perfect”. That last one, especially with a depressing, repeating guitar line almost across the entire song. While Courtney and Adam experiment with interesting textures in this song, it also serves as a nice slope downwards as we reach the final three tracks.
“anymore” strips down to one layer of harmony accompanying Courtney’s vocals, which have basically no processing or effects whatsoever on them in this track. A completely raw and vulnerable performance that is completely different from what we have heard so far. What follows is a short track with almost horror movie style harmony, “stuck (in the 90s)”. Very mesmerizing sound with dark undertones of nostalgia.
Finally, we arrive at “Who am I?” The culmination of the introspective journey of the record, a song that explores society’s expectation of women to behave in a specific way, with lyrics like “my mama always told me, you need to act more pretty”. This song revisits the interesting textures from before, but they are less spaced out. More like voices in your own head as you question who you are as well.
“wild” is overall a great album. Courtney Nord is refining her unique sound bit by bit, and I’m personally excited for it, and I hope future releases resemble this one, especially that mind blowing title track.
