Wild Pink - Dulling The Horns

Wild Pink's fifth album started life on the road, as John Ross worked out new material during soundchecks on the tour behind ILYSM, the 2022 record that had processed his cancer diagnosis through some of the band's most atmospheric, layered production yet. Dulling the Horns strips all of that away. Ross brought the band to western Massachusetts to record live in the room with longtime engineer Justin Pizzoferrato, chasing the rawer, grainier sound of Wild Pink's live show rather than another polished studio outing.

The result is the most direct record in the band's catalog, ten songs that trade glimmering atmospherics for humid distortion and a voice pushed to the edge of exhaustion. "I wanted to make economical songs," Ross has said, "music that is very much at its core three or four people rocking." Where earlier Wild Pink records took their cues from Springsteen and Petty, Dulling the Horns leans hard into a Crazy Horse-style fuzz and looseness, songs like the title track and "St. Catherine St." sounding like they were captured in a single take rather than assembled piece by piece. Ross spends the record wrestling with doubt and disillusionment without landing on easy resolution, closing not with an answer but with a decision to keep moving anyway.

Released on Fire Talk Records after Wild Pink's run on Royal Mountain, Dulling the Horns marked a genuine sonic reset for a band that had spent the better part of a decade refining its widescreen sound. This vinyl pressing, mixed by Alex Farrar and mastered by Greg Obis, captures that live-wire version of the band at full volume, distortion and all, exactly as they intended it to be heard.