Mossy Oak Shadow

“Let me introduce myself/I’ve been lost in the dark/I don’t stay in one place/I have many names,” the musician Adam Andrzejewski (formerly McIlwee) sings over wistful pedal steel on “I Just Moved Here.” You’d think the singer-songwriter would need no introduction, having been active in the music scene for two decades now. But the Pennsylvania native has evolved over the years, tapping the deep well of the zeitgeist: For eight years, he sang and played guitar in the post-hardcore band Tigers Jaw, then coined the Wicca Phase moniker and co-founded the GothBoiClique collective, whose murky underground aesthetic seeped into the mainstream. On *Mossy Oak Shadow*, the prolific artist ventures out of his comfort zone and into what he calls “mystical folk rock.” Here, roads are lonely, horizons are endless, hearts are heavy, and thunder rolls in over the darkened plains. But familiar motifs tie rootsy songs like “Enchantment” and “Meet Me Anywhere” (a duet with Ethel Cain, with whom he collaborated on her 2021 EP *Inbred*) to Wicca Phase’s past work: Portals appear in the moonlight, revelations arrive in solitude.

Wicca Phase Springs Eternal - Mossy Oak Shadow review: Wicca does a complete 180 with his sound.