Wand stopped wandering and found their focus, for now.

Wand, photo by Sofia Arreguin. Which, I guess, makes this a sort of selfie?

On Plum, Wand is less a psych band and more a classic rock band. This ends up delivering a solid album that, for me, doesn't have many highs or lows, but instead feels mostly ... competent. Don't mistake this as a negative observation. The band had been veering around a bit during their first burst of productivity, and the result was unpredictability, but not always of the best kind. Their sound differed from album to album, and I always got the impression the changes were driven more by a search for identity; a drive to flip over new musical stones and dig deeper into one sound or another without really making a commitment.

Plum is the band's first new album in two years, for Wand an eternity, and in many ways it feels more conventional, inasmuch as it profiles a band that seem to be happy with the sound they've chosen. This move allows the band to stand on an album that feels like they finally flipped over a stone and found a mirror that reflected their true intentions back at them.

"Bee Karma" is a scorcher I've got on repeat.