Tween

The word “tween” implies a certain, very specific kind of awkwardness, and those implications are rarely positive. But think about it like this: Something “tween” is in the process of becoming something else, and there’s a very specific kind of beauty in that becoming. There’s something rewarding in recognizing and celebrating it—in meeting it halfway. Now, before I start spouting clichés about the journey being more important than the destination—which isn’t true when it comes to all music except jazz, and let’s leave jazz out of this—let me introduce Tween, the new not-album by Wye Oak. If we’re putting it simply,Tween is a collection of eight songs born, raised, and almost abandoned for various reasons during the years between 2011’s breakthrough Civilian and 2014’s reinvention-of-sorts, Shriek. Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack—the band’s two halves—described these songs as “not emblematic of a step forward, but a step sideways in time.” In other words, they just didn’t make sense for album number five—which will happen at some point in the future. But just because they didn’t belong there doesn’t mean they don’t belong anywhere. To wedge them onto Shriek would’ve been dishonest; to orphan them would’ve been somewhere on the line between criminal and just plain silly. Now that your expectations are lowered, let’s build them back up, because Tween is full of gorgeous Wye Oak songs whose only crime was timing and context, made by two people at the height of their game.