Music Review // Spinster and the Ancestors "Wild West"
Right away, this song says "The wild west was never won". I think about not so much my time as a child but before that, my parents growing up for example, and how they would have films, television shows and even toys based on cowboys and Native Americans. It's funny now, looking back, how we were always trained to think of the cowboys as being the "good buys" and because they were different the Native Americans were usually the enemy. My, how times have changed and history has been realized.
"Wild West" is such a daring song musically because it has a lot of moving components. One sound you'll pick up is the acoustic guitar notes which comes through and perhaps give this the most Old West type of sound, but you'll expect that based on the title. The bass just feels like this slow, warm hum as the percussion can feel chaotic at times. All of these sounds very much bring forth the vibe of the Old West and ultimately there are also sounds which resemble gun shots, as if we were having a standoff.
Something within this song is also rather telling. There is a verse which ends with "Power flowing like molasses" and it just makes me think about how back in that time of the Old West, which was "wild" to some, there were more natural resources and now we're going to be running out of things such as water soon, if we don't change our ways. In some ways, this song really makes you feel like if those cowboys were able to learn from the Native Americans instead of trying to kill them all, maybe the world would be a better place right now.
With its distinct sound, I really enjoy the concept of what Spinster and the Ancestors are doing here. There are lines like "Come out for trouble in hell / There's poison in the well" and the whole vibe to it just feels like the Old West. I don't mind watching films about the Old West (I enjoy "The Lone Ranger") but I also appreciate how this song can sound more like the Old West than a country song. We need more music which represents this time period in this way and bonus points for it feeling like a commentary on modern times as well.
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