Tourist - Wild

Tourist
Wild
2019
Spotify

Tourist has been on a bit of a tear since releasing his first album U in 2016. I remember seeing him at Coachella shortly after that, a blisteringly hot day with Tourist slated right in the middle at one of the smaller side stages. The covered Gobi tent suddenly turned into this dark techno extravaganza. There were not a lot of us there that day but damn the people that were truly saw something special. I've been a fan ever since. Well Tourist is back with his newest offering Wild. This album picks up where U seems to have left off, but takes the darkness up a tick.  While Tourist's live performances have always felt a bit more dark techno influenced those leanings never seemed to make it on to his albums. Wild seeks to change that. Things really shift into high gear on "So" one of the album's lead singles. This album feels a bit more reclusive than his others, like He is trying to pull you in before fully revealing what this album means. It's the reason it takes so long to get to "So"; there is this lethargic and unhurried build that eventually lands somewhere quite beautiful. How and why you got there however feels like a mystery. This whole album can melt away from you, or melt into you without little fanfare. "Fiction" is one of those build songs. It shifts and moves with this room filling sound, but never truly reaches an energetic point, for that Tourist allows "Still Life" to pickup where "Fiction" leaves off. The album as a whole becomes the focus rather than the singles.

This album feels brief for Tourist who is known to draw things out. You see it on the albums title track as He does a whole mess of false starts and faints before finally letting you in on that good good at about the halfway mark. "Kin" also evokes this real primal sense of being. A lot of electronic musicians try to reach that primal place with their music, a space where you're free to allow your body to just move but very few reach it. There are moments like that here, but they are so fleeting, just like the entire record is. There is this idea of only giving you just enough, but Tourist on Wild barely gives you anything. The album is really well put together, it's just feels like it is really missing a lot. I continue to love Tourist and can't wait to see him again, I just wish there was more here to dig into.

7.8 out of 10