The Collection

Little Deaths is a nuanced, emotional and intimate step inward for the otherwise hyperbolic band
The Collection, the North Carolina-based indie-pop band founded by frontman David Wimbish.

In their time together, the tightly knit, six members of The Collection have inspired listeners with
their raucous, folk-based indie-pop sound, resulting in an unabashed positivity and participatory
spirit of shared celebration, creating an almost congregational connection with their audience.
The Collection built their familial fan base over three independent albums, 2014’s full-length debut
Ars Moriendi, Listen To The River [2017] and Entropy [2018]. The latter featured “Beautiful Life,”
and its 8.7 million-and-counting Spotify streams, earning the band praise from American
Songwriter, Glide, Parade and more, even landing on NPR Tiny Desk Judges’ Picks This was
bolstered by the band’s riotous and righteous shows touring with the likes of Oh Hello, RIPE, Tall
Heights and Sammy Rae & Friends.

Their 2023 EP and first effort with Nettwerk, How to Survive an Ending was a post-pandemic
roadmap of resolve and celebrating the moment.

With Little Deaths, however, Wimbish writes about the aches, joys and acceptance of deeply
personal growth. The progression of the band’s sound, he says, is palpable. “Our last record was
triumphant,” he says. “Little Deaths is about vulnerability.”

Key to that vulnerability was Wimbish’s decision to get sober during the pandemic. “I’d been
isolated and drinking a lot, and I realized I’d lost any sense of presence in the moment,” he
explains. “When I got sober, I realized the best — and worst — thing about it was that I felt all my
feelings. I felt really vulnerable.”

Factor in pandemic isolation, and Wimbish was faced with an almost existential urgency writing
what would become Little Deaths. “I had about 200 ideas, mostly just voice memos when I started.
But if I was going to develop an idea, I had to ask myself, ‘Do I believe this in my core? You’re
going to sing these songs every night and you have to be able to feel it in your soul’,” Wimbish
says, adding, “Sometimes I need to write songs just to kick myself in the butt.”

And kick he did. With his five bandmates spread out all over North Carolina, The Collection’s
usually collaborative writing instead fell more to Wimbish alone during lockdown, which allowed
him to tap into a hardwon presence and introspection. “I wasn’t relying on everyone else –
my vocals and melody had to be front and center and so the songs had to be able to stand on
their own,” he explains. “Then I’d send them out to everyone to add their parts.”

“Medication,” the album’s breakout single about overcoming the stigma of needing, asking for and
getting mental health help, came from a January 2023 writing retreat in a cabin in Maine.
“‘Medication’ came very, very quickly. I woke up one morning, walked downstairs, made a fire,
and just recorded the line, ‘I deserve to be well.’ Then I just broke down crying. I knew when I
sang it this was something I needed to believe deep in my soul,” Wimbish says. “I wrote the rest
of it that morning.”

“Medication” has since become a viral phenomenon, inspiring tearful reaction
videos, fan art and covers.

Recording in Nashville with producer Jeremy Lutito (NEEDTOBREATHE, Joy Oladokun, Jars of
Clay, etc.) and engineer Reid Leslie created the opportunity to push Little Death’s sound to match
the raw vulnerability of the songs by rearranging them with unconventional instruments, from ducttaped
pianos to rubber-bridged guitars, giving the songs an intimate immediacy.

The album’s titular intro “Little Deaths,” another song from the Maine writing retreat, is just
Wimbish at a piano. Lutito set up an extra microphone to record the sound of Wimbish’s fingers
tapping at the keys. He sings about his own transformation, the radical honesty people in recovery
use to describe leaving past selves that no longer serve them, with only the faith that things will
get better to guide them forward. “I’m still not the person I had hoped for/But no longer who I was/
And maybe all these little deaths are keeping me alive/Like a piece of tired wood underneath
ambitious vines.”

It’s a somber, sober way to begin, but it also establishes the vulnerability that shapes the album
as Wimbish’s voice at times quivering with the fragility of the moment. “I had a lot of fear recording
it that way. It just felt too vulnerable to put on the record,” he admits. “But Jeremy was like, ‘No,
that’s it, this is where you need to be to sing these songs.’ I’d come in with this idea that my voice
needed to be clean and technically perfect, but this way, it actually feels more like my voice live.”
Present, indeed.

Embracing this vulnerability also meant songs were free to take on new, thrilling shapes, as on
“The Weather,” about being at an emotionally exhausted low and just hoping that this too, shall
pass. “The demo version was me picking through an acoustic guitar and [guitarist Joshua Ling]
on an electric, but Jeremy wanted me to play it on a rubber-bridged guitar, which sounds like a
cello. Then we used a baritone guitar, which made it deeper, and recorded the bass through a
vintage guitar amp,” says Wimbish. “We basically completely deconstructed it, but it was Jeremy’s
way of keeping us on our toes instead of just recreating the demo.”

Likewise, “The Come Down,” which navigates a rush of highs and lows musically and thematically,
finds Wimbish empathizing with being there for someone experiencing bi-polar mood swings—
from the perspective of also suffering from them himself. It is thrilling and at times even jarring,
featuring perfectly imperfectly distorted horns.

With its hands-in-the-air deluge of emotion, “Rain it Down” may be the most classic-sounding The
Collection-esque song on Little Deaths, but it, too, finds Wimbish tapping into a deep empathy
that’s more about trying to accept his flaws than simply celebrating overcoming them. “When my
heart starts anticipating a majorly needed change in my life – a breakup, a move, a job – it can
take a long time to express it. Fear and anxiety take over, worrying that my needs will hurt others
or leave them feeling abandoned. It becomes easy to be closed off and put up walls,” he says.
“But often, expressing my truth, breaking the dam, and releasing the flood brings such an intense
sense of relief.”

“The Mood” started out as a demo without much of a beat, but found its groove in the studio, the
track winding its way around an insistent breakbeat punctuated by horns. Wimbish details