Having gazed into the forest near his home in Buffalo, Kyle J Reigle (aka Cemeteries) decided to write music in an attempt to escape his bleak urban surroundings. Six months recording in his spare room and The Wilderness is the result. Imagine Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and Beirut getting stoned and making music with the bald guy who sang the Donnie Darko theme tune. Then add bucket loads of synth and more organs than a morgue and you’re getting close to visualising the kind of chilled out folky sounds Reigle creates in the first of hopefully many albums to come. ‘Young Blood’ opens the record, combining swelling melodies and delicate echoey guitars and it’s perfect. You’ll wish you were lying on the grass at a festival listening to this, or driving one handed down a long, dark motorway. The ethereal theme continues throughout, as beautiful melodic tunes like ‘What Did You See’ and the album’s title track ‘The Wilderness’ are balanced with more upbeat, but no less fragile offerings like ‘Roosting Towns’ and ‘Brighter Colors’, the latter of which has an unmistakable twinge of Joy Division to it. Unfortunately at 6 minutes long closing track ‘A Real Gust of Wind’, takes too much time to do very little, but this is nonetheless an impressive debut album. “Are you feeling this?” asks the record’s central track ‘Summer Smoke’. The answer is “Yes”.

8/10

Katherine Jay