Wryn celebrates their reinvention in sound and spirit with nine songs of intense introspection. Don’t expect compromises – Shapes doesn’t offer them.
Release Date: 28th March 2025
Label: Righteous Babe Records
Formats: CD / Vinyl / Digital
MUSIC AS A WAY TO PROCESS COMPLX FEELINGS
Four years ago, the world of Wryn underwent a seismic shift. The Santa Barbara singer/songwriter’s world rocked, tumbled and turned itself inside-out as they looked inward, reassessed the traumas that they’d endured and began a new journey of self-discovery. That journey resulted in not just a name change but, more pointedly, in a revelational transformation to their relationship with gender. Wryn’s reinvention – in sound and spirit – became the ethos of their new album, Shapes.
With Shapes, Wryn finds themself using music as a way to process their feelings of complex PTSD and trauma. “My music got better, more personal because I was able to look at myself more clearly and see myself as separate from my trauma. Once I could see myself separate I could see a lot,” they said. “It’s not just about gender. That’s just one of the things that came from this process.”
A LOCKDOWN GERMINATION
The origin of Shapes began just as the world was emerging from lockdown. In July 2021, Wryn had the urge to make a record and reached out to Bella Blasko (The National, Feist, Big Red Machine) to help them produce and mix the project. Wryn also enlisted Grey Bear Erikson who engineered the album. Wryn did most of the recording, playing guitar and singing live at the same time.
When the world began opening up again post-lockdown, Wryn connected with drummer JT Bates (Bonny Light Horseman, Big Red Machine) and bassist/saxophonist Mike Lewis (Bon Iver) to add instrumentation. Over a year later, Blasko mixed the record and Heba Kadry mastered it – and a fine job they did, too. Focus and priority is rightly given to Wryn’s choirboy vocals and, particularly, to their intense, introspective lyrics, with instrumentation (other than Wryn’s guitars) and backing vocals kept subtly and respectfully in the background.
CRIES FOR HELP
The mould is cast right from the outset with opening track Coiled. Wryn backs their crystal clear vocals with a contemplative, pastoral, acoustic guitar and Bella’s backing vocals resonate in the most comforting of ways. Lyrics like: “Call me out – I’m coiled inside my own skin. Don’t let me make a sound – there’s tension in the silence” sound like a cry for help, but nothing’s that simple with Wryn…
And the cries for help continue with Steady, the album’s lead single, but, this time, the cries have a more defiant tone about them. Wryn’s guitar simmers and the background voices provide an unsettling edge.
FRIGHTENING IN ITS INTENSITY
For Snake – the second single to preview the album – Wryn turns their attention to processing their anger at the social and political upheavals, sadly set to unsettle America and the West for several more years to come – specifically surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-trans legislation and the overturning of Roe v Wade. It’s a song that definitely grows with repeated listens and the sincerity in Wryn’s message and its delivery intensifies, particularly as they reach the song’s key line: “Give it up your power.”
For Multitudes, Wryn were inspired by a prompt that featured in Big Thief’s 2017 track, Pretty Things, that they turned into something akin to a love letter to themselves. And, with lyrics like: “There is an eating, right at the centre of me, tells me it’s fleeting; the ground keeps shifting beneath me,” the song places a firm claim to be the most intense of a frighteningly intense bunch. Producer Bella settled for just Wryn’s intimate vocal and their gentle acoustic guitar to convey the message, with remaining backing instrumentation – JT’s percussion, Mike’s bass and sax, Raymond’s piano and her own backing vocals kept delightfully discrete.
PLEASANT AND DREAMY, SWEET AND WISTFUL
There’s a lingering desperation in Wryn’s lyrics to Only Thing, a song that builds nicely as drums, throbbing bass and synth make their gentle presence felt, before things take a folky, melodic turn for Patterns. Wryn’s lyrics reflect confusion and insecurity, yet I do sense a mood of optimism in there also. The song is pleasant and dreamy, with a light-touch pattering drum rhythm and the faintest breath of synth in Bella’s subtle mix.
Earlier this month, I described Slow Down, the latest of the three singles to preview the album, as: “…a delightfully relaxing song with a delightfully relaxing message” and that’s a summary that I’m happy to stand by. The message – that the world will continue to turn, whether we rush around madly or we don’t – is one that we should all take to heart and Wryn conveys that message with their sweet, wistful vocal tones and some wonderfully bucolic acoustic guitar. It’s a wonderful song – probably my favourite on the album.
I’LL TURN IT TO LIGHT
Title track, Shapes has been described as the central track of the entire album. It’s short, but it’s immensely powerful as, with lyrics like: “Open me up, open the flood, I’ve split myself in two for too long,” Wryn recognize the fragmentation they suffered before they embraced their gender identity. Which leads us to Sticky, the album’s lush, slow-burning closing track. It’s the song in which Wryn tackles the way that trauma has lingered in their body and haunted them in flashbacks and, at the end of the cascade of the most intense introspection that you’ll ever hear, Wryn find their way forward as they declare: “I’ll turn it to light.”
Looking back over Shapes, Wryn say: “My songs were always emotional, that never changed. Now I’m confronting the roots of the emotions.” It isn’t for the faint of heart, but anyone likely to encouraged by stories of demons being confronted and vanquished will draw strength from Shapes.
Watch the official video to Only Thing, a track from the album, below:
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