Oh Wonder – Ultralife (Vinyl LP)

When we last heard from Londoners Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West, they were capping an incredible year with a sold-out show at London’s Roundhouse. In the space of fourteen months, they went from tentatively playing a first live show at London’s ICA to touring the world, playing shows across Latin America, Australia, Russia and Asia, and repeat UK, Europe, US and Canada tours to ever increasing rooms. It culminated in 162 shows in 112 cities, with a mighty 83,000 tickets sold. A connection. Oh Wonder began as a writing project, where the duo set out to write, record and release one song every month for a year, hoping to inevitably pitch the songs to other artists. However the tracks were being listened to in their hundreds of thousands, and then into their multi-millions; now their first album is fast approaching half a billion streams. Anthony and Josephine’s side project had inadvertently morphed into an internationally touring band; a happy accident indeed. Ultralife is the sound of a new confidence seeping into the pair’s songwriting. It is muscular in its delivery, celebratory in its message, and plays with a dizzying array of textures and sounds, but without losing the essence of what makes Oh Wonder so special.