New Wye Oak

Wye Oak's new album "Shriek" is streaming on NPR First Listen.

Her lyrics tend toward poeticism, with images that could at times be apocalyptic. "Even as I stand, is the ever after," she sings in "Paradise." "See it as it lands, fire over water." That's pretty Biblical, but Wasner's gentle alto, made stronger by voice training, persuades the listener to stay with her. "I fear no information," she sings over Stack's birdsong dreams in the title track. "I'm following how it seems in present dreams." Her willingness to gaze inward encourages the same in others.

The contained but deep lushness of Shriek makes the album itself an ideal tool for calming the old thought machine. The album itself could become your talisman, treasured and well-used after many repeated listenings. The process of making this music, Wasner implies in the mystical, impeccably modulated "Before," made her "brand new." Getting lost in this music could have a similarly healing effect on others.