Ten years after it's release, Wye Oak's Civilian remains a raw, sinewy punch of a record-bleak and intense and lonely and self-assured all at once. The album unravels with the sort of self questioning and uncertainty that come with youth, and it's specific confidence in unflinchingly probing all of those emotions, feeling them to their deepest extent even when it's tearing you apart at the seams. When Andy Stack and Jenn Wasner released Civilian, it marked both the ascension and death of Wye Oak, or at least a version of it. Now, a decade later, Civilian + Cut All the Wires: 2009-2011 delves back into that pivotal record and adds a lost album of unreleased tracks and demos to Civilian's universe.
