Wild Pink’s John Ross Turns Doubts Into Dreams on A Billion Little Lights
Image courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan
By Caleb Lovell
New York-based indie rock band Wild Pink is on their way to becoming “Bigger Than Christmas.”
Before the release of their majestic third album in February, Wild Pink may have been seen by some as merely another artist in a sea of young indie bands searching for their sound. However, with A Billion Little Lights, the group was able to craft a record that not only sounded magnanimous, but also one that was deeply personal.
I had the pleasure of meeting John Ross, the frontman and creative mind behind Wild Pink, at one of his shows at the Songbyrd Music House in Washington, DC this month. This unexpected encounter led to the acquiring of some firsthand insight into the making of this exquisite album.
Lyrically, the record is deeply invested in themes of internal growth and self-acceptance. “I want to remember every single thing / Just not who I used to be,” Ross sings on “The Shining but Tropical,” the pulsating lead-off single from the album.
“I’ve always felt like songwriting is escapism,” he told me. “I try to create an idealized reality with my songs.”
The result of this internal navigation translated into music was the creation of a spacious world teeming with life and beauty. A Billion Little Lights masterfully and seamlessly weaves together song after song into a flowing river of bright strings and shimmering synths. While tracks like “The Wind Was Like a Train” burst forth with wondrous energy, softer songs like “Track Mud” glisten in their subtlety.
“The big sound of the record was definitely intentional,” Ross said. “With each record since our first in 2017 I’ve tried to make each one bigger and more sweeping.”
The hugeness of the album’s sound could also be somewhat attributed to the direct influence of the natural world in its making. Ross recently relocated from the bustle of New York City to “the middle of nowhere” in upstate New York, and that nature has become “a pretty big source of inspiration” for his music.
These natural nuances are littered all over the record, all the way down to the cover art. At some points the lyrics even revert to images of microbiological activity – a subject that is rarely weaved so beautifully into contemporary music – for metaphorical significance. On the last track of the record Ross pleads, “Just let me die outside;” it is a prayer-like lyric that also suggests a deeper connection of nature to the album’s creator.
A Billion Little Lights is also a very unique record in the sense that it is mixed so that each song gracefully flows into the one following it.
“That was also something I started on earlier records and wanted to see through [on this record],” Ross said.
In a culture that rarely listens to full albums from start to finish, this record demands to be consumed in its entirety to appreciate its beauty. In a way, this could be seen as an observance of a lost tradition that needs desperately to be reinstated into the world of modern music.
Ultimately, this album is about resilience in the midst of internal suffering – something that most of us can easily relate to with the enduring hardships that have come for the world in the last year and a half.
Perhaps this theme resounds most prominently on the track “Pacific City.” Ross sings on the chorus, “You believed that you were doomed / But you deserved the good things that came to you,” before the song explodes into a dawn-breaking blast of blaring horns and keyboards that seems to echo the personal triumph of its maker.
With this new record, Ross chooses to spread hope in his music as a way to cope with his own struggles, an act that is frankly quite moving and is perhaps worthy of emulation for all of us.
On “Amalfi” he sings, “Nothing means nothing just yet.” If the world we inhabit can sometimes seem dark and dreary in its senselessness, Wild Pink’s A Billion Little Lights reminds us of the abundance of hope and wonder that can be found within a sonic masterpiece.
