“Well now it’s clear, you’re the wind and I’m the wave. Oh together, we can brave all the things we never knew.”
What do you get when you bring together a seasoned producer named Dwight and a soulful singer/songwriter named Patty? Damn good music. More specifically, you get The Wind + The Wave—a duo from Austin, TX. Not only are they best friends, but Dwight is the wind to Patty’s wave. Over the last few years, they’ve worked together to create a sound that is uniquely theirs. Their mantra? “If it feels forced, f*ck it.”
And there’s nothing forced about them. The Wind + The Wave strive to be real. There are no facades or personas—what you hear is what you get. And from my experiences seeing them play live, you hear honesty. You hear stories of challenges and fears. You hear two friends who, while vastly different, hit all the right notes together. Dwight and Patty melt into their music on stage, translating personal experiences into songs and performances that simply rock. They’re the kind of performances you feel in your bones long after leaving the venue.
I’ll never be able to pick a single genre that encapsulates The Wind + The Wave. My favorite way to describe them is something like… badass indie-alt-rock-country-folk with a shot or two of whiskey. And even then, I feel like I’m missing some element of what makes them so distinctly them. Every song they write together is an experience that takes you away and every lyric Patty sings is somehow both sweet and feisty with a tiny touch of Texas twang.
Together, they’ve released an EP of covers and two full-length albums. If there’s one thing I know about The Wind + The Wave, it’s that they’re built to last.
From The Wreckage
The first song I heard off From The Wreckage was “It’s A Longer Road To California Than I Thought” on an episode of Hart Of Dixie before the album had been released. By the time it dropped in August 2014, I was obsessed and ready for more. From The Wreckage explores the complexities of love, relationships with family, home, growing up, and forgiveness. Patty is honest about all of it. There’s a lot of grit in the way she delivers those lyrics—be it an upbeat-yet-broody anthem or a breezy melody—you’ll feel the rawness of it in her voice. As a whole, the album has layers of acoustic and electric guitar, percussion that gets your heart beating and your foot stomping, and vocals that deliver emotion and comfort. It’s an adventure and I absolutely love it.
Picking a favorite track off of From The Wreckage is tough, but “With Your Two Hands,” “From The Wreckage Build a Home,” and “Raising Hands Raising Hell Raise ’em High” are great examples of what I love most about The Wind + The Wave. And while those songs are all wonderful, I find myself coming back one particular song even years later: “Every Other Sunday Morning.” When I listen to it, I remember the first time I heard it—where I was, what the weather was like, what was on my mind, etc. I remember feeling comforted by it. Like all the chaos just subsided and I could breathe.
Covers One EP
Only six months after the release of From The Wreckage, The Wind + The Wave released their Covers One EP. It features a solid mix of older and newer songs as interpreted by the Austin duo. What I love most about it is that the songs were re-imagined just enough. They perfectly added that W+W twist without making anything unrecognizable.
Even though I wasn’t as familiar with some of the older songs they covered, I have a newfound appreciation for every one of them. Of course, I already had a soft spot for the newer songs. Patty’s voice flutters through their cover of Sia’s “Chandelier,” while their cover of Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” is delightfully haunting (which is perfect, as it made a little Grey’s Anatomy cameo). And don’t even get me started on their cover of R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)”—it’s gold (and a huge hit at their live shows).
Long story short: The Wind + The Wave know how to cover a song. They’re song-covering royalty, if you ask me.
Happiness Is Not A Place
The Wind + The Wave dropped their second (and wildly anticipated) full-length album, Happiness Is Not A Place, this past Friday, October 28th. From the first few listens, this record definitely captures the gritty honesty that I’ve come to love most about The Wind + The Wave. This time around, they mixed things up a bit by working with an outside producer—Butch Walker.
With this release, it’s clear that The Wind + The Wave grew a little bolder, got a little rougher, and dug a little deeper. While Patty explores some darker corners of her life and her mind, we also get a peek at some personal experiences that led her to look for light. In the album’s first single, “Grand Canyon,” Patty wrote about nearly losing her brother in an accident and how that experience taught her to be more grateful for things (or people) you might otherwise look past because they’re right in front of you. I also really admire the positivity in the album’s title track. Patty sings, “and don’t you know happiness is not a place, it’s the road you take and who you choose to walk it with.”
Maybe it’s just because I relate so deeply to these contrasting themes of dark and light in my life, but I already love everything about Happiness Is Not A Place—especially “Lost” and “Take Me Back.” While From The Wreckage will always be a life-changing album for me, I feel confident that HINAP will have a way of doing the same thing. Take it from The Wind himself, “I know that some people really love the beauty of our first record, and I hope they hear the beauty inside the chaos of this record, because it’s there. It just might make you feel a little different.”
Photo by Alexandra Valenti
