Wild Pink’s endless American highway

Photography by Rafael Vasconcelos On his sixth album, John Ross stitches together snapshots from a “warped and unpredictable” middle America. He sees it through the lens of the drifters that inhabit abandoned strip malls and janky dive bars. Rot, sickness, and despair sweep through the nondescript cities, sometimes engendered by massive corporations with little regard for their environmental fallout; sometimes by the substances people use to cope as their hometowns decay before their eyes.Before moving to New York City, Ross began writing songs in North Florida, where he sought to distill the oddities of far-flung places that hardly breach the surface of mainstream discourse. Even with natural treasures like Everglades National Park and a plentiful alligator population, the region’s beauty is often eclipsed by snap judgements and clickbait headlines. Behind every “Florida man” caricature sits a quieter, less sensational story shaped by grit and struggle when it’s increasingly difficult to stay afloat. Sign up to Best Fit's Substack for regular dispatches from the world of pop culture Battling and beating cancer, then becoming a father for the first time, pushed him to create what h...