So Removed [CD]

There’s a gap between what we want, how it is, and what we want to be. An existential divide between how we dream, how we feel, how we think, and what actually gets done in the modern world. WIVES doesn’t know how to reconcile this, and they don’t try to give you the answer; instead, So Removed, their incisive debut album due out in October via City Slang, plunges into that void of unknown, a tangle of contemporary dread and optimism, mapping the gray areas of alienation.

The Queens, NY four-piece is the latest fit into a long lineage of New York’s gritty, melodic-meets-punk. So Removed, is hook-driven, grungy dark-wave, tethered to daily anxiety without resorting to cynicism. The noisy dissonance of Sonic Youth, the edgy hooks of early Pixies, and the clever, cerebral sneering of the Fall simmer as touchstones within the LP, sharp and prodding at the details, pulsing with urgency.