Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum tackles fatherhood and other life changes in a new album

Dream pop band Wild Nothing released their last album, Indigo, in 2018. Since then, front-man Jack Tatum moved from Los Angeles to Richmond, Virginia — not far from where he grew up.

He says it was the right thing to do in his life. But he admits he had some misgivings about moving to a much smaller city.

“There’s a lot of things that I hate about stereotypical suburban culture,” Tatum told NPR’s Morning Edition. “But I have this soft spot for strip malls and big box stores, and…there’s something about my upbringing that I feel was quintessentially American.”

On Wild Nothing’s new album, Hold, Tatum writes about that inner conflict on the song “Suburban Solutions” — which explores his love-hate relationship with what he calls the “consumerism” of small town life.

“This song was a little bit about making fun of myself and my own fears of moving to a smaller city and choosing this life of slowing down, settling down,” Tatum said.

Tatum then soon took on another challenge — starting a family.

“Becoming a father, at least for me, there was this immediate thought of… ‘Oh, I don’t want to mess this up, I don’t want to do the wrong thing, I don’t want to let this person down,'” he said. “I did sort of have these wonders about how am I going to tour in the same way now? How am I going to find the time to write… As soon as he was born, it was like, I want to be a present parent, I want to be the best dad that I can, and so you have to change things about your life.”

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