Dream Wife - So When You Gonna… Review
Overall the album suffers from its repetition, playing it so safe lyrically and instrumentally at several points that it works to the detriment of the project.
I remember hearing Dream Wife’s early music a few years ago and being neither here nor there on it. I had similarly hard to place feelings on their new sophomore album So When You Gonna… but kept my mind open throughout my listening. While I’m not overwhelmingly impressed by the album personally, there’s still a lot of good work that went into the project with some entertaining and really playable yet punchy punk tunes.
‘Sports!’ is the energetic opening track and lead single from this album, diving in after a brief spoken introduction into a catchy track with an excellent interplay between bass, guitar, and drums. Towards the minute and a half point in this track you get the sense that all of these instruments are building up to something really impressive but this stagnates somewhat into a long buildup for more of the same. Don’t get me wrong — it’s energetic and catchy; but I feel like this song is one that deserves to be played live rather than streamed alone. There’s a lot going on towards the song’s end as the cacophony builds an intensity that’s spectacular but due to the repetitive lyricism I find myself losing interest in the music unless I’m in the right mood for it.
‘Hasta La Vista’ starts along with an easygoing and safe instrumental. What accompanies this is Rakel Mjöll’s airy vocals singing bittersweetly about like letting go. The song is successful even in how risk-averse it is, creating a genuinely pleasant breather track after the explosive nature of the opener. ‘Homesick’ follows with a moody atmosphere and a creepily close-sounding vocal component before launching into suitably Dream Wife angsty punky singing. This cycle repeats to strong effect throughout the track before building up around the two minute market into a more energised climax that leans into the angsty vocal energy effectively before drawing to a somewhat underwhelming close.‘Validation’ irritates me. I feel as though the lyrics do little to work with the title in any meaningful or novel way and Dream Wife’s attempt to deploy the same repetition which gave strength to tracks like ‘Sports’ or ‘Hasta La Vista’ here does not work, making the track stick out to me as an annoying and vapid contribution to the album, which is a shame given the precedent set by the merit of other tracks.
Fortunately, ‘Temporary’ comes in as a wholesome palate cleanser that sings about love and life with those airy vocals once again. The steady drums and easy guitar on this track provide a surprisingly engaging core that carries throughout the whole track and grounds the track in a sense of consistency. It’s not in your face the way ‘Sports’ led me to believe most of this album would be but unlike that track it’s just a solid song with a universally appealing sound. ‘U Do U’ might be one of my favourite tracks from the album with the droning sounds of guitars and bass punctuating Mjöll’s vocals. Lyrically, it’s also a step up from a lot of other tracks which seemed to blatantly repeat lyrics. Here, it feels much more as though ‘U Do U’ has a core theme to it and that its lyrics themselves are written in a more diverse and satisfying way that compliment the song well without falling into the issue of repetition again.
At this point my opinions were mixed. ‘Validation’ had me worried for the integrity of the album to come and, while I enjoyed the two tracks between this and ’RH RN’, I didn’t have excellent expectations of the songs to come. ‘RH RN’ pleasantly surprised me, with lots of really interesting sonic components: intermittent muffled vocals, grandiose guitar and similarly active drums. Lyrically, the track seems to be oriented around living in the moment rather than singing bittersweetly about interpersonal drama.
‘Old Flame’ follows with a constant low pulse that swells into genuinely lush pockets of instrumentation that allow Dream Wife to play to the album’s strengths. Coupling these explosive moments of instrumentation against forlorn reminiscent vocals with the moody opening vocals works well. Though, I feel the track would work better if they had leaned more towards maximalism than the relatively stripped-back style at the core of the song.
Just when you thought that the promise of ‘Sports’ was lying dead and still in its grave, the titular track ‘So When You Gonna…’ takes a shovel to that grave and brings back some much-needed energy to the latter half of the album with some scratchy instrumentation, energised singing, and another banger-style song that I’d be incredibly keen to see played live. Its place in the album is another palate cleanser while also functioning as its explosive climax before closing with the final two tracks.
The guitars of ‘Hold On Me’ have a discordant quality to them, creating an unease in tandem with those characteristic spooky vocals. This really heightens the trapped sort of feeling the lyrics seem intended to convey. While it’s not exceptional it’s a welcome followup to the climactic ‘So When You Gonna…’ which, unlike the final track, still retains some of the energy of its predecessors. ‘After The Rain’ is an emotional piece with some serious room to breathe. By far the longest track, and the only to breach the five minute mark, this grants Mjöll’s vocals some room as the centrepiece of a song alongside moody piano and an ethereal, distant, guitar. While I enjoy the track it’s a substantial change of pace from anything else on the album; and, while this gives it some weight as the closer of an eleven-track album, it feels somewhat out of place.
My thoughts overall are mixed. My expectations are low and yet those the opening tracks established to compensate were insubstantial and inconsistent. I loved some tracks and I hated others. Overall the album suffers from its repetition, playing it so safe lyrically and instrumentally at several points that it works to the detriment of the project. What results is a mixed, but still promising, project from Dream Wife, though I’m keen to see improvement and more consistency moving ahead.
