Wayfinder (Clear Indie Shop Edition)

The project of indie singer/songwriter Taylor Vick, Boy Scouts expanded from a solitary endeavor to a more fleshed-out, collaborative one with 2019s Free Company, her Anti-/Epitaph debut. Following in its footsteps two years later, Wayfinder is informed by pandemic isolation rather than a breakup, but it returns Stephen Steinbrink as co-producer and includes contributions from around a dozen guests, most prevalently Steinbrink and Vicks brother Travis. It represents Boy Scouts first pilgrimage to The Unknown studio in Anacortes, Washington, a converted church operated by Phil Elverum and Nicholas Wilbur. After an instrumental prelude that includes an escalating guitar chord progression and rhythmic, multi-tracked vocables, the reflective I Get High starts things off with the lyrics I get high/Find a view/Nothing better to do/When its just me/For company. Relatable lockdown ruminations go on to consider things she wants (a kiss, some dessert, a dog, you) alongside dreamy, bittersweet guitar, Wurlitzer, and bass. It only adds drums near the end to help break open a fuzzy guitar solo. The achieved playful sincerity holds for much of the track list, with Vicks intimate, lilting confessions supported by layered, processed timbres that land two-thirds of the way between subtly cartoonish and dreamlike. She adds strings to the mix on the wistful, harmony-rich The Floor and on Didnt I?, a plaintive ballad that tries to follow the present, memories, dream narratives, and lucid dreams. A midtempo set almost from beginning to end, among Wayfinders relatively livelier, full-band entries are A Lot to Ask and Big Fan, which features wide-ranging backing vocals by Jay Soms Melina Duterte. Even still, the album never quite steps out into the sun. ~ Marcy Donelson