The excitement of Wonderland’s sometimes intoxicating live shows – big buildups and refreshing comedowns augmented by imposing instrumentation – is overpowered on her debut album. The alt-trap, trance, house music – it’s all been reduced to one level, one sound by overproduction that’s all too safe. There are no dynamics, or very few. Just a load of EDM signifiers and tropes spiralling around in need of a hook.
The list of collaborators (Norway’s Lido, electro-indie three-piece Safia, Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne turning up as an emotionally uninvolved session musician on the weedy psy-trance of U Don’t Know) fail to impress. The bass is anything but thundering. The beats are the opposite of infectious, being mostly leaden and dull.
There’s little funk, no real purpose.
The opening few minutes of final track Already Gone (feat Lido and several beautifully sung stanzas from Brave) hint tantalisingly at what might have been. Like a tripped-out offering from 90s dance pioneers Massive Attack, it rings and resonates round the brain … and goes nowhere. Perhaps if Wonderland had followed all of her strengths (not simply those she relies upon as an electronic dance music DJ) and tapped into her roots; as bassist in a previous indie-pop outfit, and her time spent as principal cellist in the Sydney Youth Orchestra.
Instead, the production aims for BANGER after BANGER after BANGER on tracks such as the string-drenched One More Hit, which also pays lip service to the progressive house of producers like Deadmau5, leading to an uneasy mid-ground which fails to convince. Much of this is down to her voice: Wonderland sings lead on most of the songs. She might have told Guardian Australia: “I don’t have to be a Beyoncé, I can still sound like myself and write music that makes it work with my voice,” but her own vocals are mainly saccharine and soporific, particularly on songs like Ignore and the comedown single Cold.
Track seven, Games, starts off promisingly enough – flighty and intriguingly nimble, with Wonderland ducking and weaving a bit like Grimes – before capitulating once more to the laboured production and lack of hook lines. Oh, for the lightness of touch and playfulness of a singer like the upcoming Australian star (and Peking Duk collaborator) Joy.
Taken in isolation, the main single, I Want U, is OK in that whole post-Lorde EDM chart-busting sort of way – at least it has moments where the beat drops out all together, and the bass starts pounding – but it still feels third-rate because of Wonderland’s vocals.
The collaboration with the Perth trap-heads Slumberjack, Naked, sounds like something Miley Cyrus’s advisers would have discarded before it even got on to the demo list; and New Yorker Johnny Nelson’s guest-rap on Carry On sounds as washed-out and blearily somnambulist as the music.
It’s left to Take it to Reality – the mesmerising trance-out therapy track made with Safia (best known for their work on Peking Duk’s hypnotic Take Me Over) – to salvage something of worth, but it’s far too little on an album that is mostly characterised by its lack of ambition.
• Run is out now on EMI
