Wildernesses Tend the Inner Landscape on Maintenance
London-based quartet Wildernesses continue to refine their quietly powerful voice with Maintenance, a single that feels less like a standalone release and more like a window into a carefully constructed emotional world. Sitting at the crossroads of indie, post-rock, and shoegaze, the track arrives as the latest glimpse into the band’s forthcoming debut album Growth, due for release on March 27 via Floodlit Recordings.
Maintenance operates in the subtle spaces of everyday life. Rather than grand declarations, it focuses on routine, repetition, and the small rituals people adopt simply to keep going. The song shimmers gently, carried by restrained guitars and a sense of unease that never fully resolves. There is beauty here, but it is edged with tension, reflecting a world where survival is often quiet, habitual, and slightly warped.
This atmosphere extends seamlessly into the single’s striking visual companion. Shot by Joey Aitchison of JWA Creations at the Cooperage on Brick Lane, the video places the band behind oversized, handmade collage masks of their own faces. Constructed by vocalist Phillip Morris from enlarged photographs that were cut, layered, and rebuilt into sculptural forms, the eyeless masks deliberately strip away vanity and fixed identity. The result is unsettling and playful in equal measure, mirroring the song’s skewed perspective on normality and self-maintenance. As Morris explains, Maintenance lives in the repetitive habits of daily life, the odd behaviors people cling to in order to feel stable, with the visual concept reflecting that same off-kilter self-awareness.
Wildernesses formed almost by accident, bringing together musicians from projects such as Late Night Fiction, Earth Moves, and We Never Learned To Live. The lineup of Phillip Morris on vocals and guitar, Ryan Browne on drums, Mark Portnoi on bass, and Sam Howe on guitar carries with it a patchwork of lived experience. Hull and the Humber’s riverside grit, East London streets, and West Sussex roots all feed into a sound that feels grounded and human. Each member brings their own “wilderness,” personal histories woven into a shared sonic and narrative fabric.
At the heart of the band lies Morris’s songwriting. Informed by his work as a mental health professional, his lyrics function as modern folk tales, shaped by loss, endurance, and the understated strength found in ordinary lives. This grounding gives Wildernesses’ music its emotional credibility. Their sound draws on the expansive ambience of Explosions in the Sky, the fragile intensity of Bon Iver, the brooding restraint of The National, the dreamlike haze of Slowdive, and the narrative urgency of La Dispute, yet never feels derivative. Instead, these influences are absorbed into a language that prioritizes feeling over flourish.
Maintenance also acts as a tonal bridge toward Growth, an album that spans nine tracks, seven lyrical and two instrumental, each forming part of a wider story cycle. Themes of insomnia, escapism, forbidden desire, family heritage, and buried histories surface throughout the record. Recorded at No Studio in Manchester with producer Joe Clayton, known for his work with Conjurer, Mastiff, and Bossk, the album balances cinematic sweep with intimate detail. Shimmering crescendos rise and fall alongside hushed, reflective passages, capturing the layered emotional complexity that defines Wildernesses’ sound.
Previous singles Four Hour Drive and English Darkness, released in 2025, established this balance of scale and restraint. One traced family lineage through inherited memory, the other confronted mental health with stark urgency, filmed amid the bleak landscapes of Hull’s Sunk Island flats. Together with Maintenance, they position Wildernesses as storytellers unafraid to sit with grief, resilience, and human fragility without exaggeration.
In a world that rarely slows down, Wildernesses offer something quietly radical. Their music asks listeners to pause, to inhabit the slow orbit of memory and reflection, where tenderness and endurance coexist. Maintenance is not just a song about routine, but about the unseen effort required to stay upright, a theme that resonates deeply in fractured times.
As Growth approaches release and the band prepares to take these songs into live rooms across the country, Wildernesses stand out as modern narrators of interior landscapes. Their work occupies liminal territory, between heaviness and hope, despair and persistence, leaving a lingering emotional afterimage long after the sound has faded.
© Thusblog
