Local songwriter Wyatt Strother is best known for fronting the poppy folk-punk band Werewolves, but while that group was on a yearlong hiatus, he hunkered down and wrote himself a solo record as WereWyatt. Flagpole is pleased to premiere the result, Fuck Depression, available today for the low price of $4 via Strother’s Athens Horse Party label. (There’s the cover art above.)
Though album is officially a “solo” effort, it eschews the familiar trappings of that term in favor of a lush and layered sound featuring banjo, piano, horns, drums and much more. It also explodes with positive energy; like the title suggests, the record is a rejection of loneliness, an ode to stepping into the light.
Stream it below:
Says Strother:
I’m trying to emphasize that this is most capitalist album I’ll ever make, because I’m seriously trying to help raise some money while I’m in school. I started going to UGA this semester, so I haven’t been able to work as much or spend as much time with Werewolves. We are working on a new album, but we’re gonna take a lot of time to work out the new material, so I took some extra songs I had and put this solo album together, since we probably won’t have a new Werewolves release ’til late next year. I recorded everything on the album myself, so it has much more of a personal feeling—it’s sort of like a counterpoint to the direction we are going with Werewolves, which is getting too raucous and crazy to accurately capture in a home recording like this.
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