Louie Miles - Wander (EP) Review

 

Photography-Callum Thompson (@callumthompson1)

November, 2021 saw Louie Miles stepping into an alien yet somehow cozily familiar territory. His third single Show the World sees his transmission into a landscape of warm, hazy psychedelia, warped in rippling guitar and rich keyboard melodies, with dry and roomy, Plastic Ono Band-esque vocals atop a nostalgia-inducing swell of noise. As dreamlike and angular as last year’s showcasing singles City Living and Another Blue proved to be, the directional change in the tracks leading up to the release of the exceptional debut EP Wander demonstrate Miles’s plunge into heavy effect exploration and structure playability, albeit pop-songwriting alchemy.

Sonically and experimentally, Miles’s expansion of sounds and ideas are continually fresh and exploratory, both instrumentally and on said production level. Following from Change the World, second single This Rain is Just a Passing Note from the Wander EP once again breaks the mold of his past efforts. It could be said that Miles’s ever-changing musical experimentalism replicates the process of most stylistically progressive bands whos movement into unexplored territory requires a number of albums’ worth of material in order to do so; Louie is able to promote his stylistic dexterity across a handful of singles, more or less within the space of a year of his work appearing on streaming platforms. Such creative capability leaves one clueless as to what type of work Miles may be producing in months to come, let alone years.

While This Rain is Just a Passing Note exposes the musical prowess of this artist- which is soon to be acknowledged-, title-track Wander opens the EP with a simplistic structure and melancholically-hopeful major chord progression, allowing room for Miles to demonstrate his ability to stack layers of effects to perfect scale; modest enough to arise the desired effects of the listener while refraining from bleeding together and disguising the foundations of the song. Indeed, the production value of the entirety of Wander seems to actually improve on the last of Miles’s material, lending itself to the tracks wonderfully. The engineering process of a body of work is something which is usually refrained from mentioning before discussing instrumentation, lyrical poignance and a long list of external qualities, but the post-recording decoration of Miles’ debut effort shines as bright as the songwriting itself, noticeably on this opening track.

Soulful slide guitar sings beneath a chirpy keyboard melody and gentle vox, dampened drums and plodding piano lines carrying the track through a continuum of mellow, shimmering swells. The song’s progressed intensity is eventually paralleled by the increased fuzz and compression of Miles’s strings and vocals alike, achieving a strikingly Julian Casablancas-sounding husk. A culminating crescendo hints at a loss of control, a wavering of pitch, which is quickly pulled back as Wander returns to its meditatively childlike opening sequence, only adding depth to the lyrical context of this number. 

As with Wander, Miles’s embedded folk, and in particular his ‘indie’ roots, poke through visibly on Track Two. This Rain Is Just a Passing Note is quite arguably the centerpiece of the EP, catchy as it is playful, an example of genre-fusion done within its means to produce a progressive-pop song, fragmented into equally memorable and moving segments. As is Karma Police to Radiohead or Echoes to Floyd, This Rain is Just a Passing Note is an anthemic tune with progressive qualities that displays a plethora of experimental findings, organic in its approach while taking inspiration from past greats. The Lennon/McCartney influence is an undeniably ubiquitous one for musicians of all descent, the trickle-down effect of their legend still permeating a plethora of scenes and styles to this day. There are prominent traces derivative of the duo within Miles’ work, from chordal rundowns to vocal similarities to replicative guitar tone. As with Wander’s surprising vocal resemblance to the Strokes’ Casablancas, This Rain is Just a Passing Note sees Miles adapting his phonetic characteristics and production method in order to channel a boxy, Seventies Harry Nilsson-come-John Lennon style of short reverbs, slapback delays and high EQs. The opening picked acoustic guitar and clean vocal are particularly akin to a mid-sixties Mccartney composition too, ringing bells of tracks like Blackbird and For No One. Contemporary influence bleeds through noticeably however, with a strong British indie-come-art-rock prominence coming through on this track in particular, though plaguing the EP from start to finish. With the Glockenspiel-emulating effect entering the mix in the second track’s initial chorus, traces of bands like Elbow and The Shins emerge, happy-go-lucky sound structures with strong experimental and artistic qualities.

Show The World brings the EP back to the mellow pace of the opening number, a short and sweet track brimming with Beach Boys-reminiscent guitars and nostalgia-inducing lyricism drenched in fairytale-like, psychedelic undertones. As much of a cliche as it may be to say, Show The World places the listener in a childlike headspace, a yearning of innocence and juvenile happiness coming across in the heart-felt melody just as much as the lyrics. “Just like a child that’s desperate to be found” strikes deep, paralleling this prevailing sense of bygone memories that occupy the track. 

As Show The World comes to a humbling halt, the soul-cleansing Breeze follows, an apt closing track for the EP. The loose drumming approach is accompanied by lazy, subtly-fuzzed out guitar, achieving a drowsy, pensive quality that encapsulates Wander perfectly; a demonstration of the progressive nature of Miles’s work in a juxtaposingly pop format, a beautiful combination of captivating melody and forward-thinking production. 

Listen to Wander on all streaming services now.