WILD HEART CLUB’S NEW SINGLE “ARCADE BACK IN MANITOU” OUT TODAY
DEBUT LP ARCADE BACK IN MANITOU OUT ON NOVEMBER 12TH
Photo Credit: Anna Haas
LISTEN: “ARCADE BACK IN MANITOU”
Today, Nashville-based dream-pop outfit Wild Heart Club has released the title track from their debut LP Arcade Back In Manitou, due out November 12th.
“Arcade Back In Manitou,” a beautiful song about revisiting a place full of happy memories after the end of a relationship, is the fourth single from the album. “I wrote the chorus when I was about to board a flight,” recalls frontwoman and creative force Kristen Castro. “My ex loved everything Colorado because she’s from there - one of my favorite moments was running from the rain in downtown Manitou Springs and finding cover at this penny arcade. I didn’t really think of that memory a lot so I was surprised when the idea came about,” she says.
“The way Dolores O’Riordan sang was a huge inspiration to me, I wanted to write a song the way ‘Dreams' by The Cranberries made me feel. I also just love how she’s not saying any words in the chorus of that song, just singing a sort of obscure melody that makes the song - that’s where the ‘Oohs’ in ‘Arcade’ came from,” she adds of the track, which features an electrified solo from Castro that gives listeners a little taste of her prodigious guitar skills.
“Arcade Back In Manitou” follows “Down From the Heavens,” which Castro says is about “all the build-up I’ve had about being gay since I was a teenager. Love is hard enough and then when you add being queer, it’s even harder. One time I played with my ex who used to sing at a church and it was such a bizarre experience watching all the people in the pews sing along to a girl who was in love with me but was also keeping me a secret,” explains Castro. “I had this vision of a god wrapped in color walking up to my ex and basically saying fuck it, go and love her, she’s more than a secret.”
Wild Heart Club also released album track “Unhappy,” inspired by Castro’s childhood, where she fondly recalls hearing her brother’s hypnotic hip-hop music through the wall, and lead single “Glitter On the Drum,” a track that feels like mourning the loss of a lover while soaring across a roller-rink under twinkling lights and that was inspired by a YouTube comment on a Robyn video. The music sparkles, but its glittery edges are sharp.
LISTEN: “DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS”
LISTEN: “UNHAPPY”
LISTEN: “GLITTER ON THE DRUM”
Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Kristen Castro is a genre-crossing artist known for blending a surprising range of electronic, digital, and analog elements into her dreamy, atmospheric indie-pop. She built a name for herself as an independent solo artist with a penchant for electric guitar, a dark sensibility, and a bracing tenderness reminiscent of acts like the Cocteau Twins.
Transforming abstract emotion into compelling music, her early releases feature everything from mandolin to bass, piano to synth, banjo to drum programming, in songs that feel both effortless and complex at the same time. Castro’s latest project, Wild Heart Club, builds off the hybrid style of her solo work, evolving her eclectic foundations into an even more distinct and cohesive sound. The synth-heavy, guitar-driven soundscapes are laced with Castro’s breezy, candied vocals: think Sigur Rós meets Heart. It’s a strange and compelling combination that feels right for the current moment.
“I’ve always been drawn to people who aren’t in the cool club—the weirdos embracing their weirdness. This is music for them, as always.” Arcade Back in Manitou was written, recorded, and produced primarily by Castro herself.
She started writing the songs that would become Arcade Back in Manitou while recovering from heartache after a particularly difficult breakup. The album is an ethereal and lush collection of melancholy songs with a brilliant gloss of retro sheen. There’s a genuine and hopeful engagement with the positive, a buoyant, almost-ironic sense of cheer teeming from the instrumentation, throughout and a spirit of experimentation and discovery, despite the themes of loss the lyrics explore.
Hints of 80s plastic-pop and elements of 90s alternative cool are nestled in the mix, as well as nods to vintage and modern Swedish pop acts like Robyn, Léon, and ABBA. “I want to be the artist who can make you cry on the dance floor. I like songs that pair darker thoughts with happy vibes. Emotions are complex. It feels right to have that kind of complicated juxtaposition play out in music,” she says. “It feels honest.”