[rating=3.00]
A large thematic portion of The Wandas debut album appears to be focused around the idea of chasing after love, or quite possibly the missing out on that existence. Listening to the instrumentation of the majority of this album, it wouldn’t be as apparent to interpret the lyricism as depressing matters; it nearly is disguised. That could be viewed as a success in terms of expressing, or changing, that idea within the sound that makes up this band.
One of the best qualities that make up The Wandas overall sound is their versatility and blanketing of harmony. On “Do or Die,” the opening organ note structure develops a choral effect which smoothly leads into the heavily harmonized chorus. The steady bass line creates a very linear progression of the song which allows for little diversion, but its nucleus is kept together neatly as elements are added. “Forever and Ever” introduces a more echoed vocal effect which adds an almost ghostly presentation to the delivery. The connection between the piano and guitar is somewhat of a question and answer dialogue as the riffs are split up throughout this song.
Through the first nine tracks of this record, sonically, each track carefully works within its boundaries and doesn’t deviate beyond its limits, but “Abandon Ship,” in the second half of the song especially, is the first realization, and expression of full on resistance. Musically, the guitar work on this track is above and beyond anything that had previously been featured, it’s almost like another generation of this band wrote this song. This is the moment of unleashment for The Wandas, on this specific collection of material, and after seeing that dimension revealed it’s that sound that seems greatly representative.
