Wild Rivers has one wish: they want to take charge of time.
Their new EP 88, released on June 22, is jam-packed with memories: childhood movies, restless university nights, and twangy guitars.
“After university, you have all this time on your hands, it’s amazing and daunting, and a common thing for all of us,” lead singer Devan Glover told The Journal.
In 88, the Toronto-based band explores yearning for a different time with tunes filled with rich vocals and haunting harmonies.
In the song “A week ago”, Glover capitalizes on the sentiment, wishing she could hit the required 88 miles per hour to travel through time in Back to the Future.
Unsurprisingly, Wild Rivers are nostalgic for their university days.
Queen’s is inseparable from the band’s music—they formed on campus, in between classes and CoGro runs. Lead singers Glover and Khalid Yassein met in second year and began singing together all around Kingston, known as the duo Devan & Khalid.
After graduation, they began to explore their passion.
To accomplish this goal, they added fellow Queen’s student Andrew Oliver as a multi-instrumentalist and his childhood friend Ben Labenski on drums.
“It all came together so easily, it was awesome. It’s nice to have four creative minds working together. We all have different inputs and personal influences and music we like to play, which gives [us] a wider palatet,” Glover said.
After their formation, the band had a busy couple years working on their first self-titled album Wild Rivers. Glover explained that with their hectic tour schedule the band found it hard to cut out a large chunk of time to dedicate to writing.
Their solution was to rent a big studio apartment for one month in downtown Toronto.
The apartment was a place to focus on their writing, cut out the rest of the world, and get their ideas onto paper. Taking a break, the band took a trip to Nashville to get some more writing done and play a few shows.
They wrote 88 in that month, in between Toronto and Nashville.
It’s uncharted territory for the band, fresh off a new release and facing the prospect of a lifetime of music.
For one, the name Wild Rivers comes from a poem by Gregory Ore about jumping into the unknown and pursuing something despite it being risky and uncertain.
“That’s where we were, because we’d just graduated and decided to give music a shot—[the poem] really resonated,” Glover said.
After graduation, it became apparent to the band how quickly time can pass.
With four years behind them and many ahead, it’s no surprise that 88 is centered so heavily around days slipping by.
These songs focus on an impatience for the future while longing for the past. The EP isn’t necessarily about wanting to go back in time, but rather the power to manipulate it.
While that future is uncertain, it can only mean good things for Wild Rivers.
Tags
Devan and Khalid, Music Release, Wild Rivers
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