LUKE WYATT (TORN HAWK) ~ HERETIC NORTH JERSEY COMPACT DISC CD

EARCAVE EXCLUSIVE

The artist known primarily as Torn Hawk offers a new collection under his given name. Though recorded more than a decade ago, the work Heretic most resembles is last year’s Union & Return. It’s stuffed with the sort of unambiguous grabs for emotion that defined U & R, voiced in the vernacular of 90’s electronica. The opening track warns you to Stop Protecting Yourself, prepare for intimacy, and get ready to cry at the movie, and the heavily melodic music that follows does it’s best to smudge your eye makeup. As usual, Wyatt offers a shifting array of references, but manages to meld everything together into an appealing alloy. Synth vistas extend to a horizon cut through by slashing guitar figures; noise makes peace with MOR. Shoegaze tropes get stuffed in a pair of cowboy boots and left under a bunk at the Alabama Space Camp. Through it all, Wyatt’s guitar dances and glints with trademark shimmer, rendering the sound of loss in tough-guy watercolor drips across a drive-in movie screen 50 feet high.