Wildernesses announce debut album Growth and unveil new single 'Maintenance'

'Maintenance' arrives with a striking video shot by Joey Aitchison of JWA Creations at the Cooperage, Brick Lane, London. The concept celebrates freedom of expression, showing the band performing behind oversized, handmade collage masks of their own faces. Designed and constructed by vocalist Phillip Morris from blown-up photographs, cut, layered and reassembled into sculptural forms, the eyeless masks strip away the idea of identity and vanity in equal measure. 

Check out the video for ‘Maintenance’ here: https://youtu.be/joheuZe_23I

Listen to 'Maintenance' here: https://lnk.to/deadlate

Pre-order Growth here: https://www.floodlitrecordings.com/pages/growth-preorder

Vocalist Phillip Morris comments on the new single: "'Maintenance' lives in the small, repetitive habits of day-to-day life - the odd things you do to feel okay. Lyrically it’s tongue-in-cheek and self-aware and that unease bled into the artwork and video with these collage masks and ‘eyeless’ faces mirroring the song’s warped perspective."

'Maintenance' is the third single to be taken from the band’s forthcoming debut album. Previous singles 'Four Hour Drive' and 'English Darkness', released in 2025, drew widespread critical acclaim for their cinematic scope and understated intensity, establishing Wildernesses’ defining balance of haze and melody. 'Four Hour Drive' offered a tender reflection on family, lineage and inherited memory, inspired by a 1957 photograph of Morris’s father and grandfather, while 'English Darkness' confronted mental health with brooding urgency, its stark visuals filmed on Hull’s Sunk Island flats under the direction of Stewart Baxter, know for his previous work with bands such as IDLES. Together, the singles positioned Wildernesses as a band unafraid to explore grief, resilience and human fragility with both restraint and scale.

Emerging as modern day narrators cloaked in atmospheric alt-rock, Wildernesses conjure emotive landscapes that feel at once expansive and deeply human. Their music occupies liminal territory, between memory and imagination, heaviness and tenderness, despair and quiet hope, offering cinematic soundscapes that linger long after the final notes fade.

Formed almost by accident and featuring members of bands such as Late Night Fiction, Earth Moves and We Never Learned To Live, Wildernesses bring together Phillip Morris (vocals, guitar), Ryan Browne (drums), Mark Portnoi (bass) and Sam Howe (guitar), each carrying their own “wilderness” of lived experience, Hull and Humber riverside grit, East London streets, West Sussex roots, woven into a singular sonic and narrative tapestry. At the heart of the band, Morris’s lyrics act as modern folk tales, shaped by his work as a mental health professional, shaped by loss and survival and the understated strength found in ordinary lives.

With a sound that draws from the wide-eyed ambience of Explosions in the Sky, the fragile intensity of Bon Iver, the brooding restraint of The National, the dreamlike haze of Slowdive and the narrative urgency of La Dispute. Their name reflects the terrains they explore, interior wildernesses of memory, grief and reflection, wild, unkempt, sometimes bleak yet undeniably beautiful.

Growth spans nine tracks, seven lyrical, two instrumental, each a chapter in a story cycle that charts the human experience: insomnia, solitary escapism, forbidden desire, family heritage and hidden histories unearthed from the past. Recorded at No Studio in Manchester with producer Joe Clayton (Conjurer, Mastiff, Bossk), the album balances sweeping, cinematic textures with meticulously crafted, intimate detail. From shimmering post-rock crescendos to hushed, reflective passages, Growth captures the layered complexity and haunting nuance that defines Wildernesses’ sound.

Commenting on the album, Phillip adds: "Growth is the result of over two years of writing, refining and learning together as a band. The title reflects both life’s way of shaping us and our own journey as a group, with a playful nod to my obsession with houseplants, the cover photo of them in my bath tied the themes of growth, texture and everyday life together. We’d never met before this project and now we’re close friends, having navigated highs, lows and the intense process of making a record that truly captures what we intended. Recorded with Joe Clayton at NO Studio in Manchester, the sessions were incredible; his calm, thoughtful approach helped shape the album’s sound and feel. Thematically, Growth aims to be real and emotive, joyful and morose all at once. It’s a huge milestone for us, and we can’t wait for people to hear it, feel the vinyl in their hands and connect with the stories in the tracks."

In a world that moves relentlessly forward, Wildernesses invite listeners to pause, breathe and step into the slow orbit of memory, into modern folk tales told through guitars, voices and textures that are at once personal and universal and where loss, tenderness, and quiet endurance coexist in equal measure.