With the recent releases from bands like Sign Language and Earth & Elsewhere, the past year has been an incredible one for Ohio’s post-hardcore scene - particularly with bands leaning into a hazy, shoegaze side of the sound. Forage & Wander, out of Cleveland, fits this description to a tee. The June 9th release of their debut LP, Remnants, is the most recent of these exciting post-hardcore releases.
Remnants is an album with significant sonic variety, something made clear by the two lead singles released prior to the album. “Late Winter Bloom,” the first of these lead singles, makes an immediate impact with the screamed vocals, accompanied by a fast paced instrumental in which the drums seem to propel the song forward. Spoken word segments break up the high energy intro and the incredibly high-impact second half of the song, in which crashing cymbals lend a sense of drama to the screamed, “These wounds still linger/Will they ever disappear?/These ghosts still haunt me/until we leave them here” that paints a desperate, defeated picture.
This is contrasted by the other lead single, “I Want to Be You.” The song is introduced to us with a soft, simple guitar lead, layered with a bit of reverb to feel rather floaty. The vocals are sang, rather than screamed, and the lyricism starkly different, with lines like “If everything you said was written in a letter/I’d bind them up, inside a book for you/And every time you changed, I’d show you older chapters/to show how much you’ve always meant to me” being some of the most romantic love-song writing I’ve seen in this scene. The song builds after this, with a soaring bridge full of captivating vocals and an absolutely addicting guitar riff.
These two songs give a good example of the sounds the songs seem to oscillate between. Tracks like “Old Stone & Merigolds” and “Astral Plane” lean more on the side of “Late Winter Bloom,” with more screamed vocals and at times violent-sounding drums, where songs like “Something Blue” and especially “I (Don’t) Want to Be You” stay on the softer side seen in “I Want to Be You.” “I (Don’t) Want to Be You” in particular features much slower, deeper vocals and a slow instrumental, that builds to an incredible climax for the record in the last minute, as Forage & Wander shows off more of their shoegaze influence, with layered guitar taking center stage.
However, the standout track for me is undoubtedly “Merriweather Parkway,” the album’s opening track. With a low, steady drum taking us through the beginning of the song, the drop at the minute mark shows us the best of Forage & Wander’s sound, with another electrifying guitar track leading us through the rest of the first half. A guitar solo at the halfway mark provides something of a shift, as the latter half of the song gains a sense of scale, the vocals soaring as they repeat, “Lose your name/Lose your place/Let your body go and be replaced/Let your soul escape/Let your body go and be reclaimed.” The instrumental during this part lends an unrivaled sense of scale to these vocals, and it is this sense of scale that defines Remnants as a whole. Forage & Wander have excellently crafted a unique sound, that avoids leaning too heavily on their obvious shoegaze and post-hardcore influences, and lets them leave an incredible impact with a sound that demands your attention.
