Your burning heart — you give it soul
I want to run to the top of a straight line
For a chance at a good life
Some albums feel like they arrive mid-stride, already breathing, already pacing the room as if they’ve been waiting for you to catch up. In Plain Sight, the latest from Calgary’s WANTS, carries that charge—music steeped in the cool urgency and metropolitan ache of Michael Mann’s ’80s film and television universe. You can almost see the heat-hazed skyline, the empty highways, the quiet ritual of a man running out the clock as city lights break against the windshield. These songs move through that same liminal zone: emotional distance, shifting identity, and the peculiar invisibility that settles during major personal upheavals. They walk the perimeter where selfhood strains against silence, where presence doesn’t guarantee recognition.
The production draws its voltage from the early ’80s sweet spot: warmth threaded through precision, machines exhaling mist, percussion marked with crystalline snap. There are hints of Ultravox and John Foxx; a touch of Bryan Ferry’s lacquered cool; and shades of the guitar drive and vocal passion that marked Big Country, Comsat Angels, and The Cure. Yet the record also stands beside modern darkwave’s current pulse: ACTORS, Drab Majesty, Vandal Moon, and Sacred Skin — artists who shape a modern continuum built on forward vocals, sleek electronics, and a cool emotional undercurrent. WANTS joins that lineage while steering it toward his own inner frontier.
WANTS’ debut LP In Plain Sight has roots that stretch across continents and years. Nabil grew up moving between Malaysia and Canada, hovering in the liminal space where belonging feels conditional. He describes writing, recording, producing, mastering, and designing the visuals alone in Calgary across eighteen months, the work unfolding during a period of major personal upheaval. Much of the album, he says, comes from feeling “physically present but unseen,” from walking familiar streets while still adrift from the people who populate them. His history of living between cultures shaped the lyrics; identity, loneliness, and transformation collided until music became the only accurate language. Releasing the album, for him, means allowing others to finally see the world beneath his surface.
Stranger opens the album with its pulse already set, sketching the slow erosion of connection and the ache of recognition slipping out of reach. Crystalline arpeggos drift by like a lost Miami Vice cue, while a quiet ribbon of guitar in the chorus softens the blow without slipping into ornament. Altered Course steers the album into midnight chrome. Synths blink like dashboard lights, rhythm humming along the city’s spine, locked onto that elusive frequency where style and feeling still travel side by side. Nabil’s voice cuts clean through the tension, firm and unshaken. His guitar fires off controlled sparks, and Tom White’s bass keeps the floor intact, steady as a heartbeat under glass.
The tone tilts on Chasing Light, where betrayal forces a re-evaluation of affection and history. Atmospheric synths and earnest vocals lend it the sweep of John Foxx, Howard Jones, or peak INXS – big feelings housed in precision electronics. Fall To The Void catches the moment when old patterns repeat, and closeness curdles. The lyrics spiral through doubt, but the music pops in a hip-hop–house chassis, all bouncy synths and elastic rhythm. That contradiction gives the track its push.
WANTS take the old Specials classic Ghost Town into colder territory. “There’s a chill in the circuitry…” and it settles fast. Where the 1981 original stumbled through Thatcherite ruin, this version cruises across a sleeker wasteland. The dub skeleton is gone; in its place, a relentless synthetic thrum, too controlled to explode, too sharp to ignore. To Surface carries the restless itch for change: slightly ominous synths, wiry call-and-response vocals, and the impression of someone blocking a path at a crossroads.
The pressure tightens on Don’t Turn Back, where identity and consequence circle the listener like unwelcome guests. Eerie synths open the track with a near-supernatural chill, while ringing guitars form a jagged halo around the vocal. Everything breaks open on the title track, In Plain Sight. A warped synth bassline, clanging guitars, and passionate vocals reminiscent of Howard Jones frame a confession of emotional drift and irreversible separation. Cycles repeat, intentions sour, and distance becomes the only workable truth.
By the time the album reaches its final measure, it settles into a kind of Electric Dream—an artefact that feels as if it were slipped from a mid-’80s record collection onto the turntable at dusk. The room grows dim, the blinds catch the last orange wash of daylight, and the music hums with the quiet tension of someone preparing to step into a life they’re still learning how to name. In Plain Sight leans into that moment between light and dark, when reflection sharpens, resolve stirs, and the world outside briefly pauses long enough for you to hear your own pulse returning.
Listen to In Plain Sight below and order the album here.
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If you want, I can tighten transitions, increase the Mann-isms elsewhere, or adjust the Electric Dream phrasing for an even more cinematic finish.
The post “In Plain Sight” — Calgary New Wave Duo WANTS Deliver a Mid-’80s Film Soundtrack From a Parallel Timeline appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
