Ten years after its release, Wye Oak have announced the release of Civilian 10-year anniversary reissue accompanied by Cut All The Wires collection of rare and unreleased tracks and demos. Civilian + Cut All the Wires: 2009–2011 delves back into that pivotal record and adds a lost album of unreleased tracks and demos to Civilian’s universe, to be released on October 22nd via Merge.
Today, Wye Oak have shared “Electricity,” a track from Cut All the Wires and the song that lends the 10th anniversary release its title: “There’s nothing about you that I don’t adore / Show me these rooms and I’ll show you the way to the door / Walk me through / I’ll cut all the wires and spend my life with you.”
Andy Stack comments: “After playing “Electricity” in live shows for a year or so around 2009, we made a studio recording but never mixed it, and ultimately decided to shelve the song. And so, it was relegated to the dustbin of time, AKA an old hard drive which I did not unearth until 2020 when I came looking for old photos and other memorabilia from the Civilianera. On my old drive, I found a treasure trove of material which we had both forgotten ever existed—original demos, live versions of the songs, and, most exciting, a bunch of fully realised studio recordings from this era which never saw the light of day. On “Electricity,” I was really bashing the drums in a way that I never would now, and I hear that same abandon in Jenn’s singing. The recording has much of what defined the first phase of Wye Oak: an urgent push and pull between chaos and beauty, and a hard-hitting attempt to push out as much sound as we possibly could from our duo setup. It’s not who we are anymore, but I still relate to the old feeling, and I still get goosebumps when I listen to these recordings. Everything old is new.”
Listen to “Electricity” below:
Civilian + Cut All the Wires: 2009–2011 artwork & tracklist:
1. Two Small Deaths
2. The Alter
3. Holy Holy
4. Dogs Eyes
5. Civilian
6. Fish
7. Plains
8. Hot as Day
9. We Were Wealth
10. Doubt
11. Wye Oak – Replacement
12. Wye Oak – Civilian (Demo)
13. Wye Oak – No Words
14. Wye Oak – Electricity
15. Wye Oak – Half a Double Man
16. Wye Oak – Sinking Ship
17. Wye Oak – Two Small Deaths (Daytrotter Session)
18. Wye Oak – Holy Holy (Demo)
19. Wye Oak – Pardon
20. Wye Oak – Black Is the Color
21. Wye Oak – Ten Fingers
22. Wye Oak – I’m Proud