Wallows album cover for their new ‘Model’
Wallows are back with a new album! After discussing a few of their previous releases here at Music Daily, we have some thoughts regarding its effect on us.
Welcome to the World of Wallows
After seven years of working together as a group, Wallows have just released their third full-length work, Model. The album was inspired by the three members’ sense of nostalgia for their years of collaboration, imprinted in each song through a clear yet mature and inspired sound.
The creation of Wallows’ world started almost a decade ago, and never has it stopped improving. Throughout the thin, layered and almost unnoticeable eras, the group has grown to develop a sound that’s easily recognisable and identifiable. So much so that the passage between the real world and Braeden Lemasters, Cole Preston and Dylan Minnette’s fictional universe happens in a short second once you click the play button.
The dreamy sounds that have always characterized Wallows’ music inebriate every beat of their new work, Model. Through the recurrent theme of love, youthfulness and California nimbleness, the group has once again succeeded in letting us in their lives. Additionally, innovation is certainly not lacking. The sounds never repeat themselves, using melody lines and a huge variety of instruments as the ways to keep each song recognisable and unique. It all creates a strong continuity between one song and another, as well as between the current and latest releases.
Uniform and constant, the album presents itself as a strong release for the group, which once again sinks its foundations, proposing itself as one of the most constant, reliable and promising presences in the indie, alternative and dream pop world.
Dull Lyricism Sets the Right Vibe
Although lyricism doesn’t shine as the group’s main strength, it all lines up with the genre’s expectations. In fact, dream pop has never aspired to focus on individual words, much less on concepts. It’s a genre that wants to convey emotions musically and make you ascend into a parallel universe, even aspiring to make the lyrics as blatant as possible. In this way, the ascent to a light, lilac-dusted, hazy world appears even more immediate and impersonal, therefore universal.
And this is exactly what Wallows are good at. Through electric guitars, almost kitsch melodic and distant riffs that caress vaporwave and its effervescent bright tones, the ’80s synthesizers and the hi-fi production, Wallows have created a sound that blends perfectly into the pool of the genre, embracing all the influences that best led to the creation of this ambience right from the opening, “Your Apartment begins.”
Between Nostalgia and Eternity
In just a few seconds, we immediately transform into the protagonist of a story that’s not ours, yet feels like it. Emphasised by the cover image of a cozy, old living room, songs like “A Warning,” “She’s An Actress” and “Going Under,” immediately immerse listeners in a sense of nostalgia for a history that we have never experienced and does not directly belong to us. Wallows‘ sound recalls a past that does not exist for the listener, but that, in a few seconds, becomes tangible and feels real. By bringing the listener back to a new but still somehow familiar dreamlike environment, the sound seems to always be able to find its space, beyond time.
