A host of love songs are scattered across the record, but they’re no less frazzled or frayed. “Headscratcher” is a tale of desire set at last call, each foggy come-on encircled by a corkscrewing guitar riff, as if the song mirrored the spiraling thoughts of romantic obsession. “Kiss Kiss Kiss,” with its Auto-Tuned vocals and woozy drum programming, hints at a more purely pleasurable version of the band’s pop impulses. Still, the track eventually collides into a seasick wall of distortion that recalls lovesliescrushing’s weightless takes on shoegaze as Pitchkites sings of unmet expectations and self pity. Even “Lovesick”—a piece of nostalgic guitar pop that recalls the more fuzzed-out corners of the Sarah Records catalog—is thrown off balance by the spirit of its title. It’s not just a song about love, but about the way desire can be an affliction.
For all the complicated feelings they express throughout the record, Wishy rarely let off the gas on Nature’s Pill. They charge headlong into the fray, which is of course one way of dealing with gloomier emotions. On the record’s closing track, “Party World,” they lay out the approach as clearly as they can. “One day, I was walking around, briefly quite demoralized,” they sing. “So I took to the sky in a big jet plane and flew until the stars were lines.” Before long, the distortion kicks in, the song takes off, and the depression’s in the rearview, for a moment. These students of twee know a thing or two about evasive tactics: Maybe you can’t outrun depression, but it’s a lot harder to hit a moving target.
