Forth Wanderers - The Longer This Goes On

There’s one thing Forth Wanderers want to make clear as they prepare to release their third album The Longer This Goes On: “We’re not back,” guitarist Ben Guterl says emphatically. It’s perhaps an unexpected sentiment to pair with the band’s first album since they parted ways seven years ago, but the band insists it’s an honest answer—they came together to record the ten intricately constructed gems that make up this new record, and they’re still figuring out what being in Forth Wanderers means to them. Listening to these songs, each a glittering celebration of vocalist Ava Trilling’s urgent and intuitive lyrics and the band’s natural musical chemistry, though, it’s hard to feel like there’s much of anything left unsaid. Filled with spit-shined melodies, chiming vocal harmonies, and slinky, slanted rhythms, the album is more expansive than just a return to form. The band isn’t afraid to take the scenic route to a hook, layering instrumental flourishes to fill in the empty spaces, creating room for Trilling’s haunting range, or repeating a riff or a lyric until it becomes a Zen koan. On The Longer This Goes On, Forth Wanderers sound more self-aware and self-assured than ever before. Just don’t call it a comeback.

The road to The Longer This Goes On began in a Brooklyn coffee shop in the summer of 2021. There, Guterl and Trilling met for the first time since Forth Wanderers’ dissolution in 2018. The three years they’d been apart had deflated some of the pressures the band felt when they were touring their previous music: “We all felt free to mess around and have fun,” Guterl says. Reconnecting with bassist Noah Schifrin, guitarist Duke Greene, and drummer Zach Lorelli made playing feel “the best it had between us since we had started the band. It felt like we were in high school again.”