LP, Limited Edition
Island (2021) EU
By their own design, Oh Wonder have always flown a little below the public radar. Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West have played music together since 2014 and (on the down-low) been romantically involved since 2013. By the time they confirmed their engagement on No One Else Can Wear Your Crown, life was good: then of course the pandemic hit, and a 120-date world tour (plus, it transpired, much more besides) came crashing to the ground. This tumultuous and deeply personal time in their private lives is the subject of Oh Wonder’s fifth studio album, 22 Break. Written autonomously in their home studio, the songs that form it are messages about their true feelings, expressed before they were able to find the words to say to one another. It’s a brutally honest and powerfully beautiful record, and one that lets listeners into the Oh Wonder fold like never before.
22 Break is a portal into such emotional states, and the life-changing, universal breakup themes (loneliness, inadequacy, resentment, fears for the future) as experienced in real-time by one couple in their garden shed. The production is icy, sparse and filled with bloops and bleeps, like a message from the ether is trying to come through - which, in a way, it was. Amidst the darkness, there finally came a glimmer of hope.