Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Wesley Wolffe is a familiar face amongst the New Orleans underground scene, coming into local favoritism playing with bands like STEEF, Sleep Habits and a vast amount of other stellar acts. But on his own, Wolffe spent years secretly molding his own career of brash post-rock and punk antiquity that is garnering some head turns across the country. Earlier this year, Wolffe released his sophomore record, Good Kind, that found him taking his unrestricted and fractured song structures into intense and exciting new territories for the young songwriter. Overgrown with the frustrations of social unproductivity, Wolffe’s writing became a controlled burn – turning what we think we know about ourselves upside down and clearing out the path of human disregard – all within the parameters of his unique and gripping creative lens.  

Wolffe unleashed his official self-titled debut album in 2020, solidifying his sound as both a writer and performer. Taking a year off from music during the pandemic, unsettled with both the world and himself, he shares, “I just moved back to New Orleans, and I wasn’t feeling super great, so I just didn’t write anything for a long time. It took much longer than I thought it would to get back in it, but I spent two years writing and settled on seven songs.” This creative breakthrough came with gathering what he learned from his last release, as he reflects, “okay, I’m gonna do this one the right way.”

Taking the songs to Mid-City Studio to record with Matt Seferian (Pope), Good Kind wastes no time in forging its own path. Broken down into individual anecdotes, these songs are seared by the sweaty and compact musicality and unique structure of Wolffe’s instrumental demands. With the accompaniment of his twin brother, Turner Wolffe, on bass and Rob Florence on drums, Good Kind’s strength comes from the moments that waver between full fledged tenacity and the DIY charm that Wolffe commends. 

These days, you don’t have to go far to feel ashamed about being a human. Now that our ability to witness the world can come from our pockets, so does our ability to see how easy it is to hate, destroy and turn a blind eye to what really matters. “I always knew that I wanted to be political with my music,” Wolffe conveys. Like the rest of us during the pandemic, Wolffe was trapped in his room, feeling useless as he could only watch each bit of string that holds us together unravel with ease. “I feel like in that time period when I was writing those songs, the range of emotion that I was feeling was very, very slim. I was just becoming numb to things,” he says. “I think I was just grieving, at the risk of sounding cliché, the loss of youth that I was experiencing as a kid in their early twenties.”

Stark in its deliverance, Good Kind opens with a reminder; “Words are just words when/ Directed towards performance.” “Trinkets”, from the very beginning sets an uneasy distance between words and actions as a frantic guitar falls in line with the band’s heavy drive – Wolffe conducting the arc from a first person perspective. “I’ve never felt a great need for self expression when it comes to my personal relationships and what not,” he admits. “My life is no different than yours. I love and hate in the same way most people do. No one needs my take on those types of things – especially these days.” 

Where Wolffe’s writing style sticks out is his ability to detach, leaving his own world views to embody new perspectives of ego, greed and ignorance, something he explains, “I think that’s why I can get into a character. Instead of just giving my perspective on something that’s fucked up, I can try to find a way to give somebody else’s perspective that might be on the wrong side of whatever issue it is.” A grueling task to say the least, to embody those that are taking the world in the wrong direction, becomes a game of observation, performance, and then reflection. “I feel like I need to hold a mirror up to them so that’s why my songs are in the first person,” he says. “Writing like this isn’t necessarily grounding – it can be exhausting and I’d like to think it’s challenging for the listener as well.” 

“I didn’t kill no one/ All this talk of funds/ Ask me if I care,” is a hell of an opening line. “Streets” is one of the most pivotal songs in Wolffe’s repertoire, thriving in a hostile demeanor that the band creates with their unfeigned performance. Yet Wolffe’s attunement to this character, with such deadpan candor, is striking when taking the gravity of this plea – as we witness ignorance and the implementation of wrongdoing beginning to melt and mold down into a targeted vendetta. Songs like “Good Kind” and “About Me” are love letters to personal greed and being indifferent to the suffering that follows in suit. “Am I hurting you with my silence?,” he sings on the song “Boulder”, a song of manipulation and distrust, and a line that takes the cake when it comes to provocative cluelessness.

“I guess it’s not far off for me to to think of myself in that way as well – to be like a really fucked up narcissist guy,” Wolffe admits, “so it’s interesting to tap into that world and write a song about it and then it can just exist.” In no way is it idolization, but a satirization of how people continually miss the mark of what it means to be human. Good Kind becomes an exercise of holding ourselves accountable in our daily actions – observe, perform and reflect. For as hard it can be to admit, we all have moments of ignorance towards our faults – and in a way, Wolffe holds the mirror to us as well – to break the loop between performance and real action that can make all the difference.

Wesley Wolffe is donating all the proceeds of his bandcamp purchases to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund which you can purchase here. For more information on how you can donate, head to their website that is linked above. You can also purchase a CD of Good Kind through New Orleans-based label, Kiln Recordings.