Win With Willard

Indianapolis’ patience is as gaudy as its monument to Tippecanoe. Fanning out from Circle Centre, where a tourist can maybe take the elevator up to the top of the monument’s spire, the populace loosens up on their cadence, they drive more recklessly while pulses slow and beats temper. Win With Willard, a small pop outfit from Indianapolis, Indiana, plays in the kind of martial anxiety that relishes in the face of the middle of a gaping, yawning Anything. Tight and traditional, the band’s rhythm section dwarves its vocals; the lead guitar barks and begs for attention. Churning and stunted arrangements sound needy, sure, but buried in context and pillaged with hooks, Win With Willard slides out of the albino speakeasies that dot their landscape. And it’s a fine United Statesian story they tell, one of struggle and steady, original vision involving a dependence on unsettling rock tropes and piston bounce. I’m talking the Dream of the Boss, and that kind of All-Apple Pie glee, like familiar guitar riffs spinning around the Midwest’s throat and strangling it. This, while unsettling, is fantastic, you must be thinking, because it all fits your demographic, and in a time when no one’s demographic is clear, you think that’s a nice, warm feeling.