Wild Rivers had a wild 2024. As the vibrant buzz of live music returns to London, one of the most anticipated acts taking the stage is indie-folk band Wild Rivers. Hailing from Canada, the group has been captivating audiences worldwide with their soulful harmonies, heartfelt songwriting, and infectious energy. Known for blending elements of folk, pop, and rock, their music feels both intimate and expansive—like the soundtrack to a long road trip with good friends.
Ahead of their highly anticipated show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, we sat down with the band to talk about life on the road, the stories behind their latest album, and what it means to finally be back in front of their UK fans.
Wild Rivers has described Better Now as a companion album to Never Better. What was the inspiration behind releasing two albums so closely, and how do the two records complement each other?
When we went to record the album, we got out a big white board and tried to cut down the tracklist to a reasonable album size. We’re not a fan of long albums, because we feel like they’re a lot to ask of people these days. When a 16-song album comes out, it almost feels intimidating to dig into. But we loved so many of the songs, so we decided to split them up between two projects. Kind of inspired by Folklore and Evermore. We liked the idea of breaking the songs up into two projects with slightly different moods. They feel very much like one project, because we wrote them all around the same time, but Never Better is like the flirtier sister of Better Now. Better Now is a little more sentimental, and definitely feels like a fall album, too, so it was fun to release each of them during the season that felt like the most fitting context for the songs.
The band has mentioned that Better Now reflects the more “moody” and “misunderstood” aspects of their journey. How does this moodier tone manifest in the music and lyrics compared to Never Better?
With Never Better, the songs feel a little more immediate, in that what you hear off the top of each song encapsulates the singular emotion we’re trying to get at. Lyrically, those songs are a bit more straightforward, too. They don’t leave you guessing. It’s our version of a pop record. On Better Now, the writing feels a little more akin to our past projects. We dig a little deeper and touch on some rawer topics. There’s still definitely elements of pop and immediacy, just with a little more depth. They feel like mirror images of eachother, but maybe Better Now is slightly older and is noticing a few extra wrinkles and getting a little nostalgic.
With Gabe Wax (who's worked with Soccer Mommy and Adrienne Lenker) co-producing Better Now, how did his influence shape the sound of the album?
We recorded Better Now at a studio Gabe had been building for over a year before we met him. It’s called Infinite Family. He and his studio partner, Adam, designed it together with so much thought and attention to detail. We were lucky that it opened up right as we were going in to finish the songs on Better Now, so we were the first ones in there. It’s fitted with vintage furniture and lots of analog gear. Gabe is also an incredible engineer, so he always finds creative ways to capture the sounds and create the palette for the records. When we’re in the studio with him, he becomes a fourth band member. All of us are bouncing ideas and throwing things and the wall, and he helps us steer the ship and shape the ideas until they fit the songs. It’s a nice, fluid process.
Your extensive headline tour spans the US, UK, and Europe, with many shows already sold out. How do you prepare for such an intense schedule, and what can fans expect from your live performances of the new material?
We spent all summer workshopping the live show, because we wanted to bring people something totally different this tour. We joke that this is our ‘eras’ tour, because we’ve almost been a band for 10 years now, so we have to be really intentional when we’re creating the set list, and make sure that it honours the fans who have been with us since day one, as well as our newer listeners who have hopped on board with the new album. Our touring band members, Julian Psihoigos (Drums) and Abby David (bass) are so solid, and we’ve created some really fun new arrangements of the songs together. We’ve all been playing together for a few years now, so everything feels very natural. I think the show is the strongest it’s ever been. In terms of preparation, the main thing is just trying to build stamina for such a long run.
We’re kind of in anti-rockstar mode leading up to tours, making sure we’re exercising and getting a lot of sleep and drinking stupid amounts of water and spending time with our families. Soulfood for the body and mind, so that we can come out of the gates feeling super healthy before we hit the road and do all the things that wreck it. We’ve been taking the physical elements of touring a lot more seriously, too. Our vocal warm ups have gotten more intensive, and we’ll often have group stretch sessions on the bus. At the end of the day, we want everything to be serving the show, especially on a tour this long. We’re kind of like marathon runners if you think about it, except instead of running we just lie horizontally on a moving vehicle most of the time.
The personal growth you experienced in your twenties is a theme that runs through Better Now. Looking back, how have the challenges of this period influenced your artistic direction and the themes of your music?
Something about approaching your 30s forces you to take a good, honest look at yourself and re-prioritize. Your 20’s is full of a lot of exploration and exciting recklessness and big life lessons, but as you make your way through them, you start having repeated experiences. There’s a lot less novelty, and you need to decide which habits and patterns you want to repeat, and which you want to break. This brutal honesty kind of eradicates any sort of illusion, which I think also solidifies a sort of self-confidence.
Even though we still very much experience self-doubt and insecurity, I think all emotions, good and bad, become easier to put a name to. Things become a little easier to contextualize and face head-on, because they’re more frequent and less potent. We (hopefully) have a better handle on ourselves and our relationships, which can make writing about them a little less scary. We’re also better at communicating with each other, and getting to the heart of what we’re trying to say in a song, which makes collaborating a lot easier. I think that shows in the writing of Never Better and Better Now, because we’re a lot more literal and honest in our lyrics.
The writing isn’t shrouded in metaphors on these songs. It’s more like, ‘this is what happened and this is how I feel about it’. We’re kind of owning some more shameful emotions, too. ‘I Want Everything’ is about having impossibly high standards for a loved one, and recognizing the selfishness in that. ‘Simp song’ is a shameless confession that you would take someone back in a heartbeat, even though they hurt you. These aren’t the most fun things to admit, but they’re real and everyone feels them in some capacity, so they’re important to write about.
Having performed alongside artists like The Chicks and Noah Kahan, how have these experiences shaped your growth as a live band, and have they influenced your approach to performing?
It’s just so cool to be able to watch real pro’s put on such massive shows every night. The behind-the-scenes of arena touring isn’t something that you can learn about until you get to experience it, so throughout both of those opening tours we were just trying to be sponges. I was really inspired by both Noah and The Chicks’ ability to maintain an intimate feel in such huge venues.
They made the crowd feel seen, and weren’t afraid to take time to talk directly to the crowd and have some acoustic portions, while also mixing in some big, cool production moments. When I go to an arena, I don’t want to feel like I’m a tiny ant watching a TV and drowning in a sea of reverb. I want to be taken on a dynamic emotional journey like that, and it was reassuring and inspiring to see them accomplish it so naturally.
Your harmonies are often praised as a core strength of your sound. How do you work together to perfect the balance between your voices, and how do the harmonies in Better Now differ from previous albums?
Vocal pre-production is probably the most integral part of our process when we’re in the studio arranging a song. We’ll take time to try a bunch of different keys and workshop different versions of harmonies until we find what feels right. Sometimes, the narrative of the song determines who will be singing lead in each section, and sometimes we’ll find the keys that feel best for each of our voices, and arrange sections from there. It’s cool how much a key can determine the feeling of the song.
In the past, we used to stick to a pretty consistent formula, where Khal would sing the verses because his voice is lower, and I would sing the choruses because my voice would naturally lift them. Now, we try to pay more attention to the narrative before defaulting to that. If a song is really personally, maybe it makes sense for one of us to take the lead the entire time, and the other person to play a more supportive role. It’s a fun code to crack.
Wild Rivers' journey started at Queen’s University in Ontario, and now you’re playing sold-out shows across the globe. How do you stay grounded and connected to your roots amid this growing international success?
Lots of face-times! We also try to be very intentional with our time off. After a tour, we’ll take a few weeks of complete down time, where we all unplug and try to spend time with our friends and families.
We do lots of journaling and therapy while we’re on tour, too. It’s all very millenial. Some of our parents are retired now, and their new full-time job has become visiting us on tour, so we’re lucky to get pretty consistent family time.
Wild Rivers latest record Better Now is available on all major platforms.
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Article By Rachel Feehan
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