Quarantine caught Anand Wilder at a crossroads.

After fourteen years and five studio albums, his former band Yeasayer—art rock experimentalists whose sonic concoctions often felt like a musical lab leak—broke up in late 2019, just before COVID-19 began careening across the planet.Friends fled for rural retreats, whileWilder’s family stayed in Brooklyn so his wife could care for her patients as a midwife, and he could resume full time parenting for their two daughters.

Professionally, it was an abrupt record scratch moment for Wilder, a veteran touring musician and ceaselessly collaborative bandmate. But Wilderwas determined to press on creatively despite theisolation and thedisintegration of hisbeloved former group. He had always blendedhis music withdomestic rhythms at home in Brooklyn, where some of Yeasayer’s later records were also cut. Now, casually picking out Max Romeo’s “Uptown Babies Don’t Cry” or Lovin’Spoonful’s“Rain on the Roof” for the kids at bedtime could ignite late night writing and recording jags.

He soon realized he was passing an intergenerational baton: “My mom, who was born in India, is a huge music lover. Whatever we were doing, the Beatles, Cat Stevens and Fairport Convention wereplayingin the house through thesehomemade speakersmy father had wired. The lockdown brought all that backto me, and the music I began making translates thatmusical moodof my childhood for my family now.I wanted to go back to basics, back to songs. Light on electronics and experimentation, heavy on acoustics and vocals.”

The outcome is his first solo album I Don’t Know My Words. Tensongs, in braided strands of English folk revival, Topanga Canyon jangle, and desert blueslicks, offer taut documents of a gloomy hour of collective confinement, but also elegant proofs of folk rock songcraft’s inexhaustible machinery. Wilder reveals vulnerable moments of pandemic panic and addresses the challenges of love and dedication as he follows New York’s path through the worldwide emergency, and as he confronts the personal, political, and professional reckonings that spanned it.

Wilder’s reputation as a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter emerged in the Brooklyn indie rock scene of the late 2000s, where he joined his bandmates in painting on the eclectic palette of synths, strings, and harmonies that defined Yeasayer’s acclaimed psychedelic worldbeat and swerving electro-pop experiments. He was at home writing and fronting big hits like Yeasayer’s “O.N.E.,” and “Wait for the Summer,” but the spirit of community always pervaded his surprising collaborations, from the guest-star-studded recordings of the peculiar rock musical album Break Line(2014) that Wilder composed with college friend Maxwell Kardon, to his occasional production credits for fellow travelers like Suckers and Das Racist.

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Anand Wilder (ex-Yeasayer), Julianna Zachariou

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Whistle Stop

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