KUTX’s Rick McNulty said it best while hosting the Digital Wild’s recent live performance: there’s a lot going on in these songs. The Austin group blurs together a disparate number of genres–rock, hip-hop, electronica, R&B–but somehow it all hangs together. The band seamlessly trades off between three vocalists, the parts intertwining so that it sounds like they’re completing each others’ thoughts. And that high-wire energy has been accomplished in a relatively short amount of time. The Digital Wild just released its debut album, Into The Digital Wild, and the group is still new to the live stage.
Not that you could have guessed it when they stopped by Studio 1A. With a five-piece setup, the Digital Wild brought their moody, tense songs to life, complete with drum samples and vocal pitch-shifting. The complexity of a song like “I Love You” doesn’t obscure its blunt intensity. “What feels good in the dark / And what looks good in the light / May not always align,” Seth Woodward sings, giving way to the conflicted emotions at the heart of the song.
