Wombo weave delicate fabrics on their latest track, “Thread”

Louisville art-rock trio Wombo are set to release Slab on 9 June, their first collection of new material since 2022’s Fairy Rust. Initially conceived of as a solo piece on the piano, "Thread" represents the stripped-back sound of a band seeking to hone its craft.

Whilst Fairy Rust exhibits the thudding baselines and dry drum kits of 90s slack rock, "Thread" is a turn towards a gauzy, dream pop sound which favours quiet and introspection. The track is spare and skeletal, and lead singer Sydney Chadwick’s haunting vocals bare resemblance to indie forebearers such as Broadcast.

Chadwick says of the track, “"Thread" was originally just a little thing I used to play on piano. I showed Joel and Cameron one day when we were messing around at practice and they persuaded me to try and put some words to it and helped me turn it into a song we could play together as a band.”

Indeed, the tune itself seems to exhibit restless acedia, as if conceived of in a glassy-eyed moment of distraction. A plaintive hum begins the song, alongside a drum beat that affords more space than it occupies. The lyrics are forlorn, and construct a heterotopic space of absence, isolation and disconnection: “Who was singing about loneliness? / We couldn’t understand the words / We all knew what they meant”.

The writer Walter Benjamin spoke of the joys of unravelling the thread as akin to intoxication: that, “we go forward; but in so doing, we not only discover the twists and turns of the cave into which we're venturing, but also enjoy this pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, rhythmic bliss of unwinding the thread.”

Wombo’s track evokes a similar sense of unravelling, as it attempts to access and work through a confused state of sonic melancholia. It is as sad and threadbare as it is pretty.