Folk sometimes feels like one of the more elite and discriminating American genres to both understand and fully appreciate, but in the case of Webster’s Wheel and their new album Yum Yum Pie, the traditional music of Americana and those who made the aesthetic everything it is today couldn’t be much more accessible and easy for us to experience. For those who aren’t already in the know, Webster’s Wheel has been making quality, vocal n’ string-driven folk for a while now, much to the acclaim of critics and scene followers alike, but in Yum Yum Pie, they essentially come full circle as a duo and get back to the basics of their craft. This pair is paying tribute to the standards of classic folk, but their style is as fresh as they come.
The instrumental melodies in “Warf Air,” “Sparkle Eyes,” “With My Hat” and startlingly cutting “Part and Parcel” are lively and made tangible to us via the steady-handed play of the band, not through some awkward soundboard scheming more typical among pop artists of all sorts these days. When Webster’s Wheel comes home to the roots of their sound, they don’t play around – everything here, from the determined voice of “All This Time” to the seemingly reckless twister of strings in “Warf Air,” is unfiltered and left in the same state we would find it in during a live performance, and sadly enough, this makes Yum Yum Pie a one of a kind album all by itself. There’s no barrier between the artists and their audience, which is partly why it’s as playable over and over again as it is.
The title track, as well as “With My Hat” and “All This Time,” was meant to be heard before a packed concert hall, and as charming as they are in this tracklist, I think they were primarily created to tease Webster and Robertson’s live performances. They certainly sold me – it’s one of the simplest songs on the record (and, despite its barebones structure, it bears a slight resemblance to the folk/pop framework of a young Melanie Safka from certain angles), but “All This Time” is actually one of the more flexible and experimentally arranged tracks on Yum Yum Pie. No two compositions on this LP share the same creative blueprint, but they’re all as interesting as they are melodically hypnotizing.
I just started getting into Webster’s Wheel’s music through the recent release of Yum Yum Pie, but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t love what I hear in this excellent new album. What I have heard in some of the records they dropped before Yum Yum Pie has been almost as good as the nine-track set found here is, but my gut tells me that we haven’t heard the very best that this act can produce quite yet. Even as deep into their career as they are now, they’re still growing into their sound and discovering more of their own artistry, and if the future is anything like the present is sounding, they’re going to be in for even more adulation over the next few years.
Chadwick Easton