OH WONDER レコード& CD

Review: Variety is the spice of life, as they say, and Oh Wonder have clearly attempted to distill that idea into their latest long form. So hard to pin down, the work here straddles many genres, all of which are accessible in their own way. Yet it never fully commits; universal adoration is clearly the goal.

For dedicated fans "No One Else Can Wear Your Crown" may be jarring. The record sees Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West, et al, explore avenues that aren't always the obvious matches for their sweet pop lullabies. There's more than a smattering of EDM throughout, see those power drops and all that synth discordance. "Nothing But You", arguably the finest here, sees contemporary R&B and shiny hip hop flows come to the fore. Of course there's plenty of Oh Wonder-ness too, "Happy" being one example, but this will be remembered as their most daring and different to date.

Review: Talk about airing your dirty laundry in public. Real-life couple Anthony and Josephine Vander West advocate inviting others to observe your process of self-redemption on their latest outing as Oh Wonder. Although not necessarily made in the pandemic, 22 Make is the direct product of what happened to this ace, unarguably shiny but always innovative alt-pop tag-team when the music stopped. Or at least when touring halted. Suddenly finding themselves facing a very different world, and a much more closed-off and isolated reality in which new experiences were hard to come by and they really only had themselves for comfort, the make or break situation very nearly resulted in the latter. Hence last year's 22 Break LP. This is the follow up, which explains, through their rousing but often delicate brand of nice melodic stuff, how the relationship was saved and new levels of appreciation for each other were fostered and cemented.