Wyldest

Wyldest has shared her new album, Feed The Flowers Nightmares, out today (9th September) via Hand In Hive. To celebrate the release, Rough Trade West will be hosting an intimate, sold out solo acoustic show to mark the launch of their exclusive silver LP. Wyldest’s UK tour then kicks-off just a few days later with a range of dates lined up across autumn.

Listen to Feed the Flowers Nightmares

Following the release of her last record - 2021’s Monthly Friend - Zoë Mead, who has been writing, recording and performing under the Wyldest moniker since 2014, felt completely burnt out. She wrote, produced and mixed the record and whilst it established her as a self-sufficient artist capable of overcoming patriarchal barriers, it left her drained and at a loss for inspiration. 

She began collaborating with Luciano Rossi (Idlewild, Dama Scout) in an attempt to seek a way out of this writer’s block, and they quickly bonded over a love of composers like Jon Brion, Mica Levi and Johnny Greenwood along with the game Doom. The coming together activated a new energy in Mead and they went on to create what they jokingly call their “doom pop” record. In reality though, the songs that make up Feed The Flowers Nightmares are meticulously constructed. Mead’s vocals are certainly the cherry on top but these compositions are so well constructed that they could stand alone comfortably. 

Released back in April, grandiose epic “The Best Is Yet To Come” picked-up acclaim from the likes of Clash Magazine and Dork. “Abilene”, hinted at the many roads the LP takes us down, being both playful and infectious but harnessing a sorrowful farewell to a close friend in the undertow. “Tin Foil Girl” continues in the same expansive yet sophisticated vein, embodying the optimistic outlook of the new album with a call to action to let loose and “have a party with your body”. “Lucid Lately” broadens the album’s soundscape beautifully while the glitchy textures of cloning track “Inky Road” offers further sonic diversity in an album that truly captures the spirit of collaboration and personal growth.

The album’s title is a self-constructed phrase about how we must find a way to accept, even leverage, the bad things - “the nightmares” - that happen to us in order to grow. It also encapsulates the importance of “feeding yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually.” Sylvia Plath’s Lazarus poem outlines how we’re all constantly dying and being reborn throughout our lives, and that was a huge inspiration on the album’s primary theme. 

Wyldest’s latest rebirth has resulted in her most complete and compelling album to date, you’d call it the work of an artist in full blossom if the album itself wasn’t informed by Wyldest’s belief in the perpetuity of regeneration and growth. What shape Mead may take next is impossible to guess but the transformation and coming of age feel that comes to life on Feed the Flowers Nightmares is one you absolutely should not miss.