Wandour’s “Distance” Captures Perfectly The Sleepy Times of Post-Industrial Urban America Pre-Rampant Re-Development

Wandour2_crop — Wandour, image courtesy the artist

If you live in a city of any real size there’s probably an district or oil refinery or a similarly bleak urban/suburban feature that seems at odds with a good human life and yet which offers a kind of tranquil if brutal beauty contrasted with the lights of the city center. “Distance” by Wandour articulates that space, psychologically and physically, well and how they’re often not so far apart and visible to each other. The orange haze of sodium bulbs painting the night sky a pale tangerine unless you’re sufficiently far enough over the horizon to escape its nimbus. The bell tone, on the border of being off-putting, is the sound of the train gates alerting drivers to stop or be aware of a rail-traveling behemoth on the way whether transit or hundreds of coal cars in winter to potentially interrupt your journey through town. It is the sound of the late night when the lights of the city signify mostly signage of corporate giants broadcasting their dominance over the landscape rather than actual human activity. And yet there’s a certain dystopian beauty to it that only people who have lived in towns with ample urban decay can fully appreciate because that distance between the business centers and the spaces where industrial activity occurs is where creative people have long been able to conduct their activities in the passive benevolence of parts of town considered undesirable. Parts of town, frankly, quickly disappearing in most cities considered cool and made that way by the city’s artists and visionary entrepreneurs. Is the song mourning the erosion of that reality? Perhaps but in doing so Wandour has captured the essence of that experience before gentrification and reckless development have washed it all away. The song is from the Night Wandering EP and a more perfect title for this kind of music would be difficult to conjure. Listen below and follow Wandour at the links provided.