Wunderhorse frontman Jacob Slater’s Wi-Fi is spotty — “Fucking nightmare on my end,” he says. He’s taking this Zoom call from the south of Morocco, where he’s spent the last four Januarys “surfing and doing nothing else.” The 28-year-old U.K. musician has grown accustomed to this kind of reset every so often. After his rambunctious but short-lived stint as the frontman of the post-punk trio Dead Pretties came to an end in 2017, he took refuge on the coast of Cornwall, picking up odd jobs, working as a surfing instructor, and taking a part as the Sex Pistols’ drummer in the TV miniseries Pistol.
“It was kind of a baptism by fire,” he recalls of that time. “[Dead Pretties] formed when I was 17 and by the time I was 20, it was all kind of gone. It was very quick.” He remembers the following years as quiet and intense, during which he came down from some “bad habits” he’d developed. “I think it’s been published someplace, ‘Ah, he went teetotal, he went sober.’ It’s not quite the case, but I just didn’t indulge myself in those ways. It was getting in the way of my own life and definitely in the way of creativity.”
Wunderhorse began in 2020 as a solo project. It quickly became clear that the vision was too big to remain a one-man endeavor, and Slater recruited old friends Harry Fowler (guitar), Jamie Staples (drums), and Pete Woodin (bass). Wunderhorse released their excellent debut, Cub, two years later, and their second album, Midas, this past summer, both garnering glowing critical acclaim. With their dark, distinctive melodies and rupturing guitar riffs, these albums are the sound of seasoned rockers who are skilled at evoking the Nineties indie-guitar recombination of the moment.
Naturally, comparisons run rampant. Rolling Stone’s Jon Dolan spoke for many when he described Midas‘ title track as “Nirvana’s In Utero crossed with Radiohead’s The Bends.” A quick scan of the r/wunderhorse Subreddit finds plenty of similarly bold sentiments: “If this band was Radiohead, Midas would be their Pablo Honey.” “‘Rain’ is so good. This is our Nevermind.”
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Slater’s thoughts on this high praise? “I’ll take that,” he says. “The aim is to find a voice that’s totally ours, but when you first come out, people sort of gauge what you’re like. So I don’t take any sort of offense to that, especially not when it’s bands of the caliber of Nirvana and Radiohead.”
Slater says he was brought up by the “great songwriters.” His dad played Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan around the house, and he remembers writing his first song when he was 12 years old. He describes the experience as “magic.”
“It was like something had come from somewhere more ethereal,” he says. “It was the first time I felt touched by that, and I haven’t really looked back since. It’s such a unique feeling. I just wanted to make it my life.”
He wrote the tracks from Cub and Midas over a long span of time, with the oldest songs going back to his late teens. “It’s kind of weird playing that stuff now,” he says. “It feels like somebody else wrote that. I don’t really know who that was now.” But that’s OK, he adds: “I think the fact that certain songs make you a little bit uncomfortable, that’s part of the vulnerability that comes along with being an artist as you change and move. Not every skin you wore is going to fit anymore, and you just have to find a way to live with that.”
These days, Slater is making more room for collaboration. “I’m still writing the bones of everything, but the sound of the band now is much bigger than just me,” he says. For Midas, the band tapped Grammy-winning producer Craig Silvey (whose credits include mixing Portishead’s Third and the National’s Trouble Will Find Me).
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“He totally changed the way we even listen to music,” Slater says. “We’d sit down every day and listen to songs that we’d known our whole lives and he’d point things out and say, ‘Isn’t it interesting they’ve done that?’ or ‘They’re using the room mics there, and then they’re taking this out and they’re letting this bleed.’ You could visualize this song that was so familiar, whether it’s Neil Young or a Stones track or something, and suddenly I could see it in a whole different dimension in my head.”
The band is spending much of 2025 on the road, bringing songs from Midas to life for the first time. “I’m still forming a relationship with lots of those songs in terms of a life context. All I want to play now is just that record,” Slater says.
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Wunderhorse have taken pages out of the books of acts like Sam Fender and Fontaines D.C., both of whom they’ve supported on tour. “All those guys have reminded me, like, ‘You’re human too and you and the band are at the center of this thing,” he continues. “You have autonomy as a person and as an artist to be able to make decisions and make your own calls and respect yourself.’”
As for what’s next for Wunderhorse? “Just keep trying to put one foot in front of the other, really,” says Slater. “I’m definitely always writing stuff. Sometimes I go, ‘Oh, maybe that’s for Wunderhorse, maybe it’s something to keep in the vaults.’ I think there’s some things cooking.”
