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The Daily Tar Heel

Music Review: Wesley Wolfe

If Wesley Wolfe is sad, at least he’s honest. Painfully, unnervingly honest. Like Camus’ absurd hero — the Sisyphus type who has resigned himself to the way things are — there’s something respectable about the defeat that peppers “Cynics Need Love Too”.

Without mincing words, Wolfe cuts straight to the chase: he’s sad, he’s a songwriter, and he’s going to depress you.

Fortunately, Wolfe’s latest is an understated and alluring form of emotional cataclysm. The local troubadour embodies the same aesthetic that Built to Spill adopted in the ’90s, pairing clipped lyrics with brash and barren melodies.

But that is not to say these songs are not fresh or inventive. It’s like reading realist fiction: when Wolfe sings, “You dropped me like a kidney stone,” you can’t help but wince and say, “Perk up, buddy.”

But there will be no perking up. Wolfe is caught in the flux between something dysfunctional and the unknown beyond it, and instead of hope, there’s an overwhelming sense of trepidation.

It conveys beautifully in these sparse and brutal songs, and the honesty here is a refreshing change from the distanced, layered sounds that populate the blogosphere.

Wolfe’s latest is nothing groundbreaking, but it’s truthful, and ultimately, it’s that sense of commiseration and intimacy that draws you in, listen after listen.

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