There are moments when life, calm in its drift, suddenly veers—like a train leaping its rails into some strange, blinding field. You stand still, breath caught, glimpsing the quiet machinery of fate turning beneath your feet. The ordinary peels away, and what once seemed a detour now gleams as the true path, paved with both ruin and revelation. It’s there we learn that meaning isn’t something we arrive at—it’s the turn itself.
Altered Course hits like that abrupt swerve—the tires catching, the body adjusting faster than the mind can. Calgary’s WANTS thrive on that vertigo, turning uncertainty into momentum. Their latest single—the second and final preview before the debut LP In Plain Sight (out November 14)—feels like a transmission from a parallel universe where the trend-setting new wave of Miami Vice never left the airwaves. It’s the kind of song you’d catch **blaring from a convertible’s car stereo at midnight**—synths flickering in the dashboard glow, rhythm pulsing against the hum of the city, forever tuned to that lost frequency where style and emotion still drive side by side.
Jeebs Nabil’s vocals command the track with the kind of intensity that recalls John Foxx in his The Garden era—rich, human, and charged with conviction. His voice cuts through the circuitry with equal parts grace and power, carrying both melancholy and motion. His guitar glimmers through the weave of synths, while Tom White’s bass grounds the surge with a pulse as steady as a heartbeat under glass. Together, they build a structure that hums with pressure but never breaks.
Their palette is unmistakably ’80s—synths gleaming like chrome, basslines walking with deliberate stride—but the delivery feels wired to the present. The emotional voltage that once powered the greats of electronic pop now surges here with renewed force. Altered Course is a collision of retro architecture and modern resolve—a recalibration written in current and conviction. Sometimes, the detour isn’t just the destination; it’s the only way forward.
The production captures that early-’80s tension between warmth and precision—machines breathing, reverb shimmering like frost, percussion striking with crystalline intent. Yet it also hums with the pulse of modern darkwave’s current vanguard—acts like ACTORS, Scared Skin, and Drab Majesty—who carry that lineage of cinematic melancholy into the present. Every sound here feels deliberate and alive, rediscovering the future one signal at a time.
Listen to Altered Course below and order the single here.
WANTS make music for those moments when the compass spins and instinct takes over. Altered Course captures that vertiginous flicker when fate short-circuits and something new begins to hum beneath the wreckage—the pulse between panic and clarity, where losing your way becomes the point.
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