Oh Wonder brings the world a little closer

Oh Wonder didn’t start out to 2

make a sophomore record about the importance of being there for one’s fellow human beings, but that’s definitely one of the thematic threads on the recently released Ultralife.

More than ever, the message is a timely one. We’re living in an age when we get constant updates on people we know thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Ironically, the digital world has made actual face-to-face contact seem unnecessary; there’s little need to catch up over coffee when you’ve got an Internet connection. And that makes music—especially in a live setting—more powerful than ever. According to bandmates Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West, the best thing about being in Oh Wonder is bringing people together somewhere other than online.

“Music is this incredible force that’s bigger than any one person,” Vander Gucht opines, speaking with West on a conference call from London, England. “It’s one of the few things that unites people from all around the world.”

West jumps in: “And we’ve somehow been able to build a platform for ourselves to speak to people. It’s been very inspiring hearing people’s stories. We never thought we’d have music that connects with so many. That’s always the dream when you’re younger and writing songs.”

On Ultralife those songs are relentlessly optimistic, the two bandmates touching on everything from bigcity isolation (“Solo”) to runaway climate change (“Lifetimes”) to difficult breakups (“Bigger Than Love”). Working once again under the loose umbrella of synth-soaked alt-pop, Oh Wonder isn’t afraid to take chances, loading the meditative “My Friends” with cinematic strings and salting “Slip Away” with trap-lite percussion.

If Vander Gucht and West sound like seasoned pros on Ultralife, that’s because they weren’t exactly new to the business of making music when they formed Oh Wonder. She’d done time as a solo singer-songwriter under the monikers Layla and Jose Vanders, and he played in bands like the U.K. alt-rock unit Futures.

Initially, Oh Wonder was strictly a home-studio endeavour.

“We both had our own projects going—he was in a duo, We the Wild, and I was playing live, so Oh Wonder was supposed to be nothing but a songwriting project,” Vander Gucht says. “Literally, the sole intention was to build a songwriting portfolio so that we could write songs for other people alongside our own projects. It never entered our minds to take Oh Wonder live.”

The two began posting songs on Soundcloud, after which the hype began. A year’s worth of those tracks would eventually be packaged as the debut, Oh Wonder, which Vander Gucht and West intended to celebrate with a handful of live shows. Those initial dates—there were four of them—went off so magically that the two began adding more, with Oh Wonder eventually blowing up to where the band was on the road for a year and a half, playing sold-out gigs around the globe.

That frenetic schedule would make the writing of Ultralife a challenge the two were happy to undertake. Phase one was booking a month off in the middle of the touring cycle for Oh Wonder; the two bandmates realized a lifelong dream by holing up with recording equipment in a New York Airbnb.

“It was pure indulgence for us— we’re obsessed with the city,” Vander Gucht says with a laugh.

Part of their time was devoted to seeing the Big Apple and part to working on new material that they eventually finished back in the U.K. The only goal for Ultralife? That would be making sure they had something that would bring people together—and not on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

“Being able to work in New York for that month took the pressure off writing a record—other than the selfimposed pressure,” Vander Gucht says with a laugh. “All we had to worry about was doing ourselves justice and doing this project justice, and making sure we had something good for the thousands or millions or whatever people that we’ve kind of collected as fans over the last couple of years.”

> MIKE USINGER

Oh Wonder plays Malkin Bowl on Wednesday (September 6).

Britt Daniel is amazed at what Spoon has become

Austin-based indie rockers 2

Spoon have been cranking out earworms since the mid-’90s. Their reliably catchy guitar-driven singles have been featured in movies and TV shows ranging from The Simpsons to this summer’s Spiderman: Homecoming, and they even claimed the title of Metacritic’s highest-rated band of the ’00s.

That isn’t to say Spoon’s sound has stagnated. Hot Thoughts, the group’s ninth studio album, features heavy synths, maracas, and peppy piano riffs, and concludes with an extended saxophone solo.

“The me that started this band would be very surprised to hear this new record in its entirety,” songwriter and vocalist Britt Daniel tells the Straight from his home in Austin. “I mean, we were all about bass, guitars, and drums, you know. That was it when we started out.”

But positive reviews and high concert turnout suggest that these sonic departures are working. Spoon’s music seems to fit naturally into the background of whatever moment it’s playing in. Hot Thoughts dips in and out of a number of musical eras— there’s familiar early-2000s indie rock on “Can I Sit Next to You”, improvisational jazz on “Us”, and ’70s David Bowie–style piano on “First Caress”. Given all this musical time-travel, it’s a bit surprising when Daniel says the only overarching goal was to make a work that wasn’t necessarily rooted in the here and now.

“We had this vague notion that we wanted the record to sound futuristic,” Daniel says. “I’m not even sure if we used those terms literally, but that was sort of on my mind.”

This vision dictated which songs made the final cut. One acoustic ballad was thrown out because it didn’t fit the vibe. The same considerations were taken into account when building the set list for the band’s ongoing tour.

“At this point we can’t try to play every song we like, because there’s just not enough time,” Daniel says with a laugh. “We felt like we kinda created a sound world with this album. It’s a record that goes off in a couple places into this atmospheric, soundscape-y kinda place. And we thought what songs from our catalogue would fit into that world.”

Daniel isn’t sentimental about letting go of older fan favourites, particularly because he’s noticed audiences are most receptive to songs from the last two albums.

“Honestly, the newer songs get more response and that’s probably a good thing,” Daniel says. “I mean, that’s better than the opposite.”

As for how Spoon’s kept it interesting all these years, Daniel’s best explanation is that as a songwriter, he moves toward things that sound right.

“I just start singing what comes to me. That’s usually a good place to look,” he says. “And that’s something that happens without a lot of intention, you know. Usually I’ll record that, I’ll listen back, and I’ll go, ‘Did anything good just happen?’”

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to Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane. “So we put a lot of pressure on ourselves in making that album. Blue Note was actually really relaxed and chilled out—everyone was very supportive—but we put the pressure on ourselves, on top of the pressure that we already felt with just trying to push ourselves and trying to do something different. It was a tricky one to make.”

It’s not tricky to hear, however. Although generally considered a jazz act due to its familiar piano-trio format, Gogo Penguin puts a decidedly modern spin on the idiom, building its tunes from melodic modules in much the same way that many sample-based acts do, and taking as much rhythmic inspiration from electronic dance music as from the funk and hard-bop classics of yore. Man Made Object contains 10 concise, tuneful, and punchy numbers—although one could argue that it also sounds rather pressurized, compared to the rolling spaciousness of v2.0.

That’s not going to be an issue with the trio’s next release, which Illingworth and company will finish after their September tour of Canada and Japan.

“It’s hard to describe, but it [recording] is just a lot of fun again,” the pianist explains. “Even though it was really, really hard work, as it always is, it felt exciting, and it felt fun, and it felt like something we were all able to put our ideas into.”

Illingworth doesn’t want to say too much about the new effort, which has yet to receive a title or a final mix. But he’s happy to talk about how extramusical factors have influenced what he’s brought to Gogo Penguin’s new repertoire.

“In terms of finding ideas and things to be inspired by, we try and keep an open mind and look into everything we can, whether that’s reading novels, or philosophy, or looking at different forms of art,” he

> ALEXANDER VARTY

Gogo Penguin plays Frankie’s Jazz Club next Saturday and Sunday (September 9 and 10).

Before being spotlighted as a guitar-wielding 2 indie artist to watch with Middle Kids, Australia’s Hannah Joy went through a number of permutations as a musician, some of them yielding songs that still float around on the Internet. Bring up, for example, the downtempo synth track “Shiver, Wither”, which can be unearthed on Bandcamp, and the 26-year-old responds with “Oh my gosh, how do you know about that? Is that still in the world?”

One can be considerably less diligent to get a handle on where Joy finds herself today, namely a critical darling whose debut EP, Middle Kids, has been praised for bringing together the best of ’90s-vintage college rock, amped-up alt-country, and live-wire shoegaze. Clearly one to give credit where due, the singerguitarist—who grew up playing classical piano—is quick to name her husband and bass player, Tim Fitz, as someone who changed her approach to making music.

Calling from Annapolis, Maryland, where she’s gearing up for a North American tour, Joy says: “When I was making music like ‘Shiver, Wither’ I liked it, but I wasn’t totally onboard. It felt like that was all I was able to do at that time. Still, it had a cool groove and I love a lot of the melody, and those are two things that have always been important to me. But I think it wasn’t until I met Tim that I really started to get on the guitar. I haven’t played guitar for that long, and I’m still trying to find my way around the instrument. He helped me a lot.”

Middle Kids, she suggests, draws as much inspiration from Fitz’s record collection as her own. Joy notes that as much as she loves music, she’s not one of those obsessives who need it on while they’re making dinner, washing the floors, or brushing their teeth. Her husband, on the other hand, clearly believes that few things are more annoying than the sound of silence. That’s opened her up to worlds she didn’t know existed back when she was mastering the piano.

“He likes old punk stuff—really early punk,” Joy says with a laugh. “I’m talking really fun old music that I wouldn’t have ended up listening to on my own. And a lot of music that boys seem to love, like the Chili Peppers and Zeppelin. For the last couple of years I’ve been obsessed with that stuff, whereas before I didn’t really get it. Now I totally get it.”

She’s also got the importance of doing one’s own thing rather than aping others, which is another way of saying that Middle Kids at no point sounds like Robert Plant ripping through a chainsaw-punk version of “Suck My Kiss”. Instead, with Middle Kids you get a record where “Old River” starts out as a beautiful stab at firebrush Americana and then explodes into a finale of psych-punk guitar pyro. Middle Kids proves as comfortable tackling driving acoustic folk (“Never Start”) as it does melancholy piano balladry (“Doing It Right”).

“I worry about continuity and keeping everything like it’s a body of work,” Joy says, but admits she’s really not losing a lot of sleep over that. “Maybe it’s because we’ve got such a mix of influences in Middle Kids, or maybe we’re just lucky because it’s our first EP, but we were able to just vomit out things very naturally and organically.”

> MIKE USINGER

Middle Kids plays the Biltmore on Thursday (August 31).