Petaluma [LP]

This Wild Life have only been around since 2010 but they’ve already had multiple lives. The duo of Kevin Jordan and Anthony Del Grosso met as outcast drummers in their hometown of Long Beach, California, and eventually formed a well-received punk act. They started to notice that their fans seemed to gravitate toward the duo’s acoustic material, which inspired them to form This Wild Life. Their 2014 Epitaph Records debut album Clouded saw them transitioning from stage dives to sing-alongs, and their follow up album 2016’s Low Tides showed the duo taking their songwriting to the next level by fleshing-out tracks with expanded arrangements and inventive instrumentation. The duo have lived with their records for the last four years and decided what they love and what they don’t about them. Early on in the writing process for Petaluma they made a mutual decision to make a record that felt brighter, more uptempo, and something they would personally want to listen to every single damn day. They limited the arrangements to only instruments that can physically be played. You would think these limits in place would’ve confined them, but the opposite occurred. It opened the door to some of their most honest and explorative songwriting to date. Suggestion from the band about Petaluma, “Listen to it loud with the windows down, on Sunday mornings when you’re cleaning up around the apartment, or throw on some headphones and find some comfort in it’s escape.”