Wild Yaks Releases New Album 'Great Admirer'

Today, Brooklyn's beloved Wild Yaks are releasing their newest offering, the swaggering, sun-soaked Great Admirer (Ernest Jenning Record Co.). The lead-up to the release saw the release of the titular lead single via Glide Magazine, who called it "a catchy and dire track that combines almost surreal musical elements with flashed of brass pop," followed by the debut of "Feast of Flesh" on MXDWN.

In a typical (though no less unique) display of his endearing, sprawling joie de vivre, bandleader Rob Bryn shared some thoughts on the genesis of Great Admirer, detailing many of his exploits that have taken him to so many different places (and the people he connected with there) since the release of 2015's Rejoice! God Loves Wild Yaks:

"Maybe it's because my single mother went back to work when I was four months old and I was raised by a succession of different women, we must have always been saying goodbye, that longing has always been the single biggest thing in my life. Or maybe it was because my first love in 9th grade was unrequited and so torturous and so much bad poetry and saw me sent away to military school because frankly it was driving me mad and trying to prove my love was making me act crazier and crazier. Military school is where I first took LSD...but that's another story.

The last couple years since the last Wild Yaks record I've been spending summers in Rockaway Beach. Literally trying to recreate or one up the summer of 2012. By having the most beautiful summer romance. Having the best most beautiful time in the process and being the beloved darling of the town. She and I would be the King and Queen of the Night and everyone would be happy to see us. But since 2012 I've gone 0-4, and prolly even worse than that but my memory is being kind to me. Four wonderful women I couldn't talk or dance or sing or kiss into a summer romance. It hurt so bad! I'm a 42 year old man. The world is burning. This is all I can think about? This is what the songs are mostly about.

I wrote "What Does My Love" in the basement of Sarah's house. It's probably mostly for Hannah and for myself to feel better. "f from Beyond the Grave" is about Hannah too. Gross!

"Goddamn" I wrote in Puerto Rico when I was living on my brother's sailboat with Emilia. I think I started it before Emilia got there. It's probably mostly about Sophie.

"Do You Believe" started about Adriana from Puerto Rico. But by the time we recorded it I think it became more about my fantasy to be one of those guys, who, many years from now!, swims out into the ocean alone at night. Never to be seen again.

"Great Admirer" is from the perspective of a fighter pilot. This is the oldest song and was almost on the last record. I don't remember where it came from really. I think at first I was so upset that people were dying in explosions from bombs and missiles. Not that it was my place to, but I wanted to express something on behalf of the people that were dying in this way. I was thinking about the Middle East. Somehow that feeling became this song. And now I'm embarrassed to admit that I hope people in the armed forces like it and Wild Yaks gets to play on an aircraft carrier like Cher! I hate war. I love life.

Couple harvest seasons I was up in NorCal working the weed trim. "Strawberry Wolf" is what i called the shaggy red headed farm manager of the last place I worked at. I imagined his adventures in the woods and in the cosmos.

"Pharaoh Song" is a response to Julian Jayne's "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind."

"Feast of Flesh" and "Vanish" are pretty self explanatory.

Also since the last Yaks record I sailed on boats to the Caribbean a couple times. Facing the void. And getting some brutal self knowledge about what kind of man I am. Not as tough as I'd like!

And I was living on a boat in Rockaway and the boat next to me caught on fire when I was laying in bed at 3 in the morning, coming down from being high on fentanyl for three days and literally laying there moaning and groaning and kicking and wishing I was dead and then the whole world around me was on fire and I lost everything I owned, guitars and bicycles and camping gear and everything, and the $7000 in cash I had saved all summer bartending on the boardwalk five days a week. All my cash burned up. And I thought the people on the boat where the fire started had melted to death and wouldn't know till the next day they were alive. I lived through that. That s's on the record too.

And I spent a bunch of time in Miami and New Orleans since the last record. Been to Mardi Gras a couple times. And Haitian Rara in Little Haiti in Miami. And I've been down and out in both of them towns and in love affairs in both of them towns. All of it's on the record! I hope you enjoy it!"

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