Normally at an album’s ten-year anniversary, we all get together with the people that we’re still friends with to belt out our favourite tunes and reflect on the good times. Any other year, that’s probably what La Dispute would have done for Wildlife, but of course this isn’t any other year as the world continues to limp through the coronavirus pandemic.
In lieu of that, the Grand Rapids band have announced today that they’ll use their Patreon page to dive into 2011’s Wildlife track by track, “through essays, videos, live-streamed Q&A, photos, stories, podcast episodes, interviews and more.” They added: “It’ll be as thorough a look through as we’ve done with our music and equal parts for you and for us, who somehow have barreled forward together and apart in this bizarre niche of the world for eleven years now from the empty apartment above a Dunkin Donuts in NYC where we slept during recording and are feeling particularly nostalgic these days.”
Meditating on what they would have liked to have done to celebrate the milestone, they noted in the announcement that “high hopes” would have seen them touring, “playing the record either in full or largely in full to celebrate it with you, in cities across the globe.” They of course didn’t want to let the celebration go all together, “given the extent to which it has in the time since its release affected our existence as a band, and also individually as people to this day, and so an idea arrived”.
As part of what they shared with fans today, they also flagged slight delays with their new music but re-assured that it was on the way. Their Here, Hear project, its accompanying podcast and a project designated as Meantime all sit on the horizon. “Trying, like many,” they note, “to stay active and to stay close to a world that for now fades into the rearview, waiting for the U-turn to come, which it will. I believe it.”
