Wicked Park

A coiled spring of garage psych tension, "Wicked Park" detonates in the first few seconds and refuses to release its grip. John Dwyer's guitar work here is jagged and insistent — not a wall of fuzz so much as a serrated edge, cutting through the mix with riff patterns that feel almost compulsive in their repetition. The rhythm section locks into a locomotive groove, tight and unforgiving, while cymbals crash like debris caught in a windstorm. Dwyer's vocals arrive hoarse and urgent, pitched somewhere between a warning and a command, the delivery half-sneered and half-shouted, never pausing long enough to let the listener settle. There's a claustrophobic energy here — the kind of song that makes a room feel smaller, the walls pushing in. Emotionally it evokes the specific paranoia of a city block at night, the sense that something is wrong and has been for a long time. Rooted in the San Francisco DIY psych-garage scene that Dwyer helped define through the 2010s, it captures the ethos of a band that records fast and plays faster. You'd reach for this in the first half of a sweaty show playlist, or on a walk home when you want the city to feel menacing and alive rather than just empty.