Digest Usa September 2019

Beginning in 2013 as a gnarly psych band with garage tendencies, Los Angeles' Wand quickly made several albums of weird and suffocating music. They ran with the quickly evolving scene that included Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin, and bandleader Cory Hanson's songs fell into similarly scuzzy territory. A shift began in Wand's sound around the release of 2017's Plum, the first album from the group to reflect a new lineup and a new democratic approach to songwriting. Plum and the subsequent 2018 EP Perfume set the tone for the drastic shift the band has been undergoing, and Laughing Matter cements these changes.