Where the Wild Ones are

Keep It Safe is more than just another stellar moment in what has been an exceptionally strong year for Portland music. The new album by Portland fixture Wild Ones is the perfect illustration of a vibrant facet of the city’s music community.

Scheduled for release on July 9 by Party Damage Records, headed by former Willamette Week music editor Casey Jarman and Ben Hubbird of The Morals, Keep It Safe captivated me on first listen. This proper debut album is a document of a band with an astounding maturity in terms of their pop sensibilities and immaculate arrangements.

I had the great privilege of sitting down with the band for a brief interview on a rainy summer evening. Playing the recording back, I was struck by a few things. First of all, my superfluous use of the word “like” (it was my first interview, OK?), but, more importantly, the band’s grace and humility, as well as their dedication to and support of the bands that have helped them throughout their nascent career.

It’s impossible to have any sort of discussion about Wild Ones without mentioning the indelible voice of singer Danielle Sullivan. Her voice brings an innocent, childlike quality to tracks like “Rivals” and the eponymous track “Keep It Safe,” a tender ballad anchored by simple, haunting piano chords.

Keep It Safe is deftly sequenced, top-heavy in the best way with five lead-off songs that could all be singles, which gives the album a great deal of immediacy and listener satisfaction while allowing the band to flex their muscles on more expansive, experimental tracks in the second half.

Back to the maturity part—my favorite moment of the album occurs at the end of “18 Mile Island,” a track that begins and ends with a stunning two-chord progression that washes over me upon each listen. At the end, the progression appears to be building toward a climax but then suddenly drops off, leaving the listener wanting more—until the record segues into the mid-tempo romp of “It’s Real.”

Every once in a while a song comes along that enamors me to such an extent that I wish I could open it up and live inside it. “Golden Twin” has been one of those songs and a constant fixture on my iTunes playlists. In a sense, “Golden Twin” exemplifies all the best parts of Wild Ones; the inventive synthesizer work of Thomas Himes seems to match and complement the melodic engine of the song perfectly. Lyrically, both on “Golden Twin” and the album as a whole, there’s a sort of wistful melancholy that steers all of the pop-ness away from being cloying or saccharine, into something unforgettable and deeply resonant.

The members of Wild Ones seemed genuinely touched as I related my affinity for “Golden Twin” (I’m not going to lie, it may have been a Chris Farley Show-type moment) in our interview. It was hard not to notice their humility, both in how they spoke about their excitement about playing to larger live audiences (such as a recent opening slot for Edward Sharpe) and, more importantly, how frequently they would steer the conversation toward other bands. They insisted that I at least mention the Portland-born and Brooklyn-based synth-pop duo My Body, who are slated to open for Wild Ones’ album-release tour—and indeed, they are worth checking out.

We spoke a bit about what being from Portland means in a royal sense for a band that’s starting to venture outside the Beaver State. Not much, as it turns out. As much as Portland has become a sort of mecca for artists and musicians, there’s still a great deal of resistance waiting for Portland bands that try to find a wider audience. Some of this might arise from the sonic diversity of the bands that play here. There are many scenes here, but the lack of a signature sound has allowed bands from other cities to be more easily packaged for group tours. The band mentioned just a few of their friends—Radiation City, Brainstorm and Typhoon—and noted the lack of aural similarities.

“It’s less of an aesthetic,” Sullivan said, “and more of a community.”

It’s the musicianship and songwriting that make Keep It Safe a great record. It’s their embrace of collaboration and community that make Wild Ones quintessentially Portland.