Will Wood And The Tapeworms – To Be Or Not To Be
Here is Will Wood’s story:
On a beautiful and blessed day, he was born, shading his self under the leaves of his family tree, and, “Originally meant to live a miracle”.
As magic and poetic as should be, he woke up in a world as chaotic as can be,
And he’s now progressing into a journey, rather an odyssey, that won’t leave him the same.
Nostalgic of who he used to be, he might suffer of forgetting his self,
He might want to find his self again, he might manage to find his self again, well, kind of…
Among so many ifs and maybes, the only certainties are that Will is rising his consciousness in quest of his true self
Escaping a (hallucinatory) reality and ripping off false identities he might have made of himself,
As he stares in his mirror, Will would create his own truths to acknowledge who he’s outta be, ‘that is God to [him]’.
Being who you are, unapologetically, and the simple fact to just Be, whatever the environment and its influences, whatever the time and space: this, is goddish.
Once you dig that and correlate it to the art cover of the album, which takes the symbol of Hindu god Shiva, with Will’s crazy makeup with the third eye,
You get the point of his individualist album Self-ish by Will Wood and The Tapeworms,
[Produced by Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Kevin Antreassian and featuring performances by members of Foxy Shazam and Frank Iero and the Cellabration]
But you get the whole point of the album when you understand that you can just embrace a version of your true self… well, ish.
These reflections might blow your mind, this must be why Will go so insane, bizarre and crazy in his album.
Another thing distinctive with Will: he seems infatuated with death.
‘Eulogy’, ‘winter comes and takes my life’, ‘the death I had in mind’,
There is a whole lexical field about death, and he seems to consider it as the final step before getting the absolute truth of who he is.
In the last track of the album, “-ish“, we could actually interpret it this way, when the final and sad piano note end his statement “No it doesn’t matter who I am.
And I’m gonna be”.
Behind the craziness lays a craft so poetic, artistic, and quite deep, indeed.
If the band can be considered as progressive rock arrangements, emo/punk attitude, and wild mood swings, with Latin influences, and even gypsy sounds kind of like,
This five piece band sure can prove their virtuosity, along with soothing piano chords, charismatic saxophone, wild guitar, and loud drums.
Actually the intro and the outro of the album of the most virtuous tracks,
Inviting you to a universe that looks beautiful and calm from the outside, yet that hides hurricane and tides in the inside.
