London based four piece Kid Wave’s debut album ‘Wonderlust’ is without doubt one of our favourite albums of 2015 so far. It’s a stunning collection of songs and reaffirms our view that singer, songwriter, guitarist, and Kid Wave lynchpin Lea Emmery is one of the brightest new talents to emerge in recent years. There’s a beautifully uncontrived openness and straightforwardness to Emmery’s literate dreamy compositions, combining melodic buoyancy with an overarching sense of wistful longing. But rest assured this is not the place for agonised navel gazing and self-flagellation, there is no doom-laden introspection, rather a sense that here is somebody trying to assimilate their own experiences and make sense of their place in the world.
‘Wonderlust’ is perhaps an album that could only have been written at a certain time in your life, and although it’s refreshingly free of cynicism it is in no way naïvely optimistic. However the underlying mood isone of celebration, conjuring up a sense that Emmery and her band cohorts reside in a world in which hope will always win out over gloom. Musically Kid Wave combine classic guitar riffs with soaring blissed out pop hooks, evoking a youthful unconstrained ache for adventure, and discovery, whilst at the same time eliciting a sense of wistful nostalgia for those endless summers and limitless horizons when the possibilities seem infinite.
There’s nothing that remotely resembles a filler on the album – Gloom despite the title is anything but, and is, in fact, one of the finest examples of life-affirming guitar pop and rock you’re likely to hear in this life or the next! Honey is all driving propulsive splendour, I’m Trying To Break Your Heart is simply stunning, Sway is as hypnotic as it is majestic whilst Best Friend aches and shimmers with a yearning beauty that few songwriters can muster.
There’s no pretension, no arch agenda, Kid Wave aren’t here to push boundaries, break taboos, or f**k, with your head man, but they may well capture your heart. They are content to write elegant beautifully crafted escapist music, and what they have achieved with ‘Wonderlust’ is to produce an album that will surely resonate with anybody who has been young and dared to dream.They’ve also contrived to make this writer’s world an infinitely better place for the near forty-minute span of the album. And sometimes y’know, that’s all you need.
The Fat Angel Sings 