I can’t tell you much fact-wise about Wartime Sweethearts – they’re from New South Wales (that’s in Australia – FACT). They are influenced by moths and consist of 4 members – Louise Nutting, Wyatt Moss-Wellington, Kirsten Nutting and Angus Cornwell. Their website doesn’t work. That’s about it.
Oh, and their debut album Pancake Orion is amazing. A random mix of ideas and instruments, it has a habit of being somewhat disjointed – breaking from sultry female vocals to bring in minimalist electro beep-booping halfway through Sea Ceiling before the sultry vocals slide back in as if nothing ever happened, for example.
A lot of the time the jazz-influenced vocals and instrumentalism balance so precariously against each other that even the slightest alteration would make the whole thing collapse into one big, heaving, twinkly mess. But that just doesn’t happen. Sure, occasional moments jar and it sometimes feels like it’s music made by someone who can’t write fast enough to get all their thoughts out but despite all of this Pancake Orion is truly marvellous, compelling and damn good.
Imagine Sufjan Stevens, Yeasayer, Jeff Buckley and Tunng coming up with an album together and getting Solange Knowles to sing on it and you get a rough idea of what’s going on here. Mad, synth-y jazz-based number Bee Bop is a particular highlight as is the slow, squelching Hungry For Heat and the twinkling, affable Warmest Chord. Lyrics are also as mad as a box of frogs a lot of the time – “Fax me to the future”, “I’ll be your violin if you’ll be my boy” and the quite infuriating “She keeps coming back like a bad boomerang” – Surely boomerangs are meant to come back, that’s the whole point! Surely this woman is a good boomerang!
Mild, pedantic irritations aside this is a fantastic album from a band who I hope to hear a lot more from in the future. Currently their gigging seems to be restricted to Australia. In fact it’s restricted to a single date in Bar ME in Sydney on January 30th at the moment. But the ambition, ability and creativity of this band can not be doubted, and that makes for fantastic listening. Fact.
Find out more at
(that is literally it - no Facebook page, no Bandcamp or Soundcloud account, no videos on Youtube and not a Tweet to be seen. You can buy the album Pancake Orion at www.cdbaby.com though)
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the lovely review.
Info is slowly making its way onto other websites such as bandcamp via some helping hands. I kind of put it off because self-promo gives me the heebie jeebies - and you know, uni exams/silly season kind of excuses...but thank you for the proverbial boot up the behind. :)
Best wishes
Louise