Stream: Wye Oak, ‘Fear of Heights’

Kevin Bronson on January 21st, 2020

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Wye Oak (Photo by Kendall Bailey Atwater)

As they have often over the course of six albums, Wye Oak take a simple notion and turn it into something transcendent on their new single “Fear of Heights.”

The song is the latest from the prolific duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack since their 2018 album “The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs,” and like the rapturous “Fortune,” released in November, it imagines the tendrils of human emotions (trepidation, in this case) wafting like smoke through the canyons of the mind. It is at once vast and intimate.

“This song’s central metaphor likens the deepening of a relationship to the feeling of ascending to the top of a very tall place,” Wasner says. “There’s something to be seen (or learned, or experienced) once you arrive, but for some there is also a fear that increases with every step upwards. You say it’s worth it for the view, but it’s impossible to know if that’s true until you get there to see it with your own eyes.”

The Baltimore-birthed duo, now living in the same city (Durham, N.C.) for the first time since 2012, embark on a tour they’re calling “JOIN” in late February. With an expanded live band, Wye Oak will be performing songs from their catalog, the principals’ respective solo projects (Wasner’s Flock of Dimes and Stack’s Joyero) and others. Two L.A. dates are listed below.

||| Stream: “Fear of Heights” and “Fortune”