On Great New Album, Wild Pink Embrace Noise and Levity

As the chief creative force and sole permanent member behind the heartland rock project, Wild Pink, John Ross has penned some of the most memorable pearls of wisdom committed to music this century.

His specialty is combining eloquent, powerfully earnest sentiments with blunt reminders about the absurdities of life, such as when he sang, “You're a fucking baby/but your pain is valid too,” on “Oversharers Anonymous,”—his ode to modern drudgery from the 2021 Wild Pink masterpiece, “A Billion Little Lights.”

Even with a written record of such witty wordplay that stretches longer than a CVS receipt, Ross might have somehow topped himself on “Still Coming Down,” the muscular title track of his great new album. On that song, Ross plaintively sings, “You got a compass right where your heart is/ you know what to do/ When you stop eating shit/ they stop feeding you.” It is both impossibly romantic and hilariously crass—the latter half of the couplet sounding like something Tony Soprano would say to his wayward son A.J.

There is some truth to that analogy as well—Ross said he wrote that song with his two-year-old son in mind, and there is something impossibly uplifting about hearing a father give advice that combines such earnest sentimentality with defiant realism.

“I think it’s so much fun when the songwriting can be playful,” said Ross. “I was thinking about my kid when I was writing it and I know that it's rooted in something very real and sweet. But I also really enjoy pairing something together like that with another line that’s a bit of a head-scratcher.”

Ross will bring that playful nature to the Bay Area over the next week, opening two shows for the Americana folk act Shakey Graves—the first at the Napa Theater on Saturday, and the second at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Over the course of his six-album discography—an arc that contains nothing but great records—Ross has remained gleefully hard to pin down. Wild Pink’s first records were ethereal and ambient—synth-heavy pop songs that featured poetic, interpretative lyrics that focused heavily on the internal and personal.

Around the time of the third Wild Pink album, “ILYSM,” the music became more muscular and raw, with heavy guitar riffs and urgent tempos replacing the languid and tranquil moods of the earlier records like “Yolk in the Fur” and “A Billion Little Lights.” Ross also continually expanded his lyrical focus, pivoting from deliberately opaque, personal musings into a role of a modern day troubadour—one who recounts and examines the mythical, folkloric nature of our culture. 

Throughout “Still Coming Down,” he returns again and again to characters on the marginalia of modern history—some sinister, some simply little known. On “Round of Applause at the End of the World,” Ross details the conspiratorial nature of the Kennedy assassinations, rehashing the theories about Sirhan Sirhan being hypnotized and Jack Ruby being a patsy for larger forces. 

During the song prior, album opener, “Box Store”—a wry look at middling consumerism—Ross waxes poetic about the dramatic chops of character actor William Fichtner (trust me, you’d recognize him), and in “Like Water,” a song inspired by his time living with boarders as a child, he namechecks the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Ross, a cancer survivor who has written deeply emotional and stirring songs about his illness in the past, said it has been fun to transition to something lighter and less bound to his personal life.

“Lately, I’ve just really enjoyed being able to indulge my oddly specific interests,” said Ross. “I feel like I’m just going to keep writing about the Cold War and stuff like that. Why not? I have fun doing it.”

With murky, shady characters looming all among the shadows of “Still Coming Down,” (not you, Fichtner! I’m talking about the Ceaușescus of the world!), the album’s sonic landscape is appropriately abrasive and ragged, with feedback-laden guitars dominating the proceedings, and although Ross’ vocals maintain their trademark steadiness, his voice does rise to previously unknown levels, most notably on the soaring, Built to Spill-inspired indie rock anthem, “500 is the New 250.”  

“I just made a series of albums that were very emotional and tender, and now I kind of just want to rock out,” said Ross. “I look back on some of those records and they almost feel indulgent, and so it feels good to just have fun with music. I’ve explored the idea of writing impressionistically, about the nature of life and stuff like that, and now I’m in this mindset of making music that’s more urgent and in the moment. And those kinds of songs are just so much more fun to play live.”

A songwriting wizard, Ross actually has one of the more interesting origin stories around, having been schooled under the tutelage of Cameron Winter’s father, Stewart, who wrote commercial jingles for television.

“That happened to be the one real job I’ve ever had, where I was a staff composer for the music company that Cameron’s dad owned,” said Ross. “His dad was actually a very important person to me early on—he gave me a shot in the music business. I still keep in touch with him—he’s a great guy. And yeah, I knew Cameron way before he was this big rock star.”

With a background like that, it’s no surprise that Ross has emerged as one of the preeminent voices of the indie rock age, but his voice and approach are wholly his own. In addition to being one of the truly nicest people in the industry, Ross’ ability to imbue pain and pathos into the inherent silliness of our lives is something unmatched by his peers and it’s what elevates Wild Pink into the absolute upper echelons of the field. (By this writer’s estimation, no other act has matched Wild Pink’s steady output this past decade.)

In the closing moments of “Round of Applause at the End of the World,” Ross laments that he doesn’t know “what my idea of fun is anymore,” but you can tell that line’s a feint—a misdirection. “Still Coming Down” is an impish and mischievous delight, and one can tell that Ross enjoyed every moment of the record. 

It’s evident that he long ago stopped eating shit—and his heart is a compass pointing in the absolute right direction.

Show Details:
Wild Pink with Shakey Graves
Where: The Napa Theater and The Castro Theater
When: Napa Theater—7 p.m., Saturday, October 17; Castro Theatre—7 p.m., Tuesday, October 20
Tickers: Napa Theater--$49 - $89, available here. Castro Theatre--$48 - $90, available here.