Wye Oak, the duo featuring Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack, have announced a collection of new songs and previously released singles called Every Day Like The Last. It’s out June 23 via Merge and marks what the band calls a “format shift” in the way they release music. Instead of “album-length groups of songs,” Wye Oak are opting to “deal in singles.” One of their new songs is the project’s title track, out today.
Comprising nine songs (three of which are brand-new), Every Day Like The Last was recorded in Wasner and Stack’s home state of North Carolina and Virginia at venues such as Stack’s backyard studio. The other six tracks are singles Wye Oak have released since 2019.
Opening up about “Every Day Like The Last,” the band explain:
This song is about the sacrifices we make for love, companionship, and community. Human beings are messy, and yet—we need each other. The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. But for all of us, and especially for those of us whose formative relationships were not so simple—alone can feel like the safest place to be. This song is about learning how to relax into imperfection, release the impulse to control, and accept the reality that life is brief and always ending, so we might as well have some company.
Wasner adds:
There’s been so much uncertainty in our lives. Not just our lives personally, but everyone’s—and a big part of my life has been learning how to live inside of uncertainty, and not feel like my own emotional discomfort requires that I have to figure out, or attempt to figure out, how everything is going to be… Something that felt exciting to me was being a little bit more fleet-footed and light about being able to put things out into the world. A lot of these songs, we would write them and record them and then they’d come out a couple of weeks later, which, to me, just sort of feels so much more in line with how the creative process works and feels on our end of things.
Every Day Like The Last — that could mean every day like the day that came before, or it could mean every day like the last day that you get. Both meanings apply. But for me, trying to live inside of the uncertainty is the theme. That is the thread that ties all the songs together—tolerating the discomfort of not knowing.
Stack adds: “Trying to find comfort in the unknowing resonated with me a lot, and I feel like that is a thread that has run through everything—finding cheer in the doom of the world. Things have been tumultuous in so many different ways over the last four years while we’ve been [making these songs]. Both our lives have undergone extreme changes on an individual level, not even thinking about on the larger level of what everyone’s going through.”
Listen to “Every Day Like The Last” below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Every Day Like The Last”
02 “I Learned It From You”
03 “TNT”
04 “Its Way With Me”
05 “Fortune”
06 “Evergreen”
07 “Fear Of Heights”
08 “Walk Soft”
09 “Repeat (If You Remind Me)”
Every Day Like The Last is out 6/23 via Merge. Pre-order it here.
