Wild Cub Lowers a Thunderous Boom

Nashville's becoming a bigger and bigger hotbed for rock every passing month. Add quintet Wild Cub to the list. The brains behind the mask are Keegan DeWitt and Jeremy Bullock. Keegan handles the chief songwriting duties whereas Jeremy is your jack of most trades multi-instrumentalist. Early on drummer Dabney Morris grabs the spotlight as a unrelenting spitfire. Initially the impression one tends to get is "Oh, rhythms that insist upon an epic social event." Then, Dabney settles down and we're privy to the inner workings of a song riding an agreeable wave rather trying to top one crest with an even more logic defying crest. Clapping along is a must here. The collective group vocals tingle with heartfelt honesty. You're not going to discover a band setup where, inevitably someone's going to come down with a pronounced case of LSD (Lead Singer Disease). Perhaps that last observation is premature because Wild Cub has only been making the scene during the 2010s. There hasn't been enough time for bassist Harry West to declare that's he's grown weary of the life of a touring rock band and would rather dedicate his energies to being a session musician for hire. That would be a shame because in the recording sessions for "Thunder Clatter" Harry strikes heavily, underscoring where this thunder gets its roots from. If you say to yourself, "How shiny the production is," and I'm guessing only a Frasier Crane type really sums up his glee in that exact way, you can thank Eric Wilson. He's the primary reason why "Thunder Clatter" has the even-tempered glitz of one of the cutesy "80s synth bands. Eric's job title with Wild Cub is keyboardist and synthetist. Jeremy strums at a feisty pace. Eric drops down the dazzle, lending animation to a song storyboard steeped in vigor that backs up the assumption that rock is a young man's game. Each man's notes pop off his respective instrument. After the quintet gets to the meat of the vocalizing matter we've made the relationship commitment. Rooting value is so paramount to a musical act's lasting power. Again, too soon to tell if lessons learned from this recording session will lead to "remember when" conversations about which of us caught Wild Cub in its infant stage and how we knew they possessed intangibles for long term, hotel room trashing success. Back here in the infant stage they've sown the seeds of unshakable momentum. "Thunder Clatter" spins the yarn of sad boy meets sad girl. Two lonely sparks searching for a valued cosmic connect. A lot of the lyrics centered on the two lost souls fumbling around in their individual dark crannies lurching for the perfect light switch to rid them of that nagging empty void. Is this storyline's payoff worth the back history? No doubt in my mind. The last stanza shows Wild Cub leaping off of the page and into tenderness's inviting grasp. In the previous stanzas we'd been instructed to gaze politely, enraptured by the cuddly beats and their affectionate pink ribbon. In the home stretch we're out of the pews front and center for this suddenly celebratory revival tent minstrel mash-up. "Thunder Clatter" is what very likely could be only the first of many '80s throwback desserts from this Nashville gang's "Youth" album. Losing love has proven itself to be devastatingly easy throughout the annals of recorded music. High fives to Wild Cub for milking the joy out of the moments where we're granted the ability to look it straight in the eye and plant a messy smooch. Wild Cub steals no one else's thunder. Instead it demonstrates a way with banging out a convincing rumble of its own.