Last month, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Cooper Formant, AKA Wastelander, released his debut album What is Left of Me. “Although ostensibly a solo record,” as we wrote in a preview, the record drew “upon the wealth of talent in Nashville’s Americana scene,” with the likes of Jo Schornikow, Paul Defiglia (Langhorne Slim, The Avett Brothers), Spencer Cullum and singer-songwriter Erin Rae all featuring. Rae joined Formant for single ‘Be Where’, what we described as “a throwback to the classic folk rock stylings of the Laurel Canyon scene” which sounded “sepia-toned and wistful without abandoning its sunny buoyancy.” An encapsulation of the record in how it paired searching emotion and lush folk sounds.
Fresh off the back of the album, Wastelander has returned with Feed the Ducks, a new EP featuring bonus material and demos complementing the full-length. Songs which might lack the polish of those on the record, but in doing so offer a new dimension to Formant’s work. Take single ‘Papa Was a Parasite’, a psych-pop song recorded at home with an iPad and iRig which uses its DIY aesthetic to further the themes underpinning it. Because as the title suggests, the track offers a picture of being a stay-at-home father and an artist, wrestling with the associated guilt and indignity of living a life contrary to traditional stereotypes and the apparent will of the world. The result is often tongue-in-cheek but always sincere in its message, drawing on influences as diverse as the words of Carmelite monk Brother Lawrence. ““I am doing now what I will do for all eternity,” as the fifteenth-century Frenchman once wrote. To embrace your own life if to find meaning and peace.
Feed the Ducks is out now and available from the usual places.