I’d like to begin this review with a definition of a key word to She’s Excited! and their new album.
Sonder – the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed.
With that definition in mind and just over ten songs included on this album, Moments of Sonder is a bizarre and full-fledged romp, led by the ambitious Anne Wichmann. She is someone with a fierce energy, and without a doubt, at least in my critical opinion, someone who really appreciated the musical approaches of late genius David Bowie.
“We will meet amazing people and hear wonderful and sometimes difficult stories, we will briefly listen in while passing by and then move on. I hope that everyone will find their own moment of sonder in the music” – Anne Wichmann
Though none of the songs on this album have been released quite yet, here are a few of the group’s early highlights that sent waves across the late 2010’s Soundcloud peak. The first of which is a real highlight and not just because of the cool music video.
To me, she makes accurate and lush soundscape music, painting with a brush of audial audacity most would kill to have themselves. Entangled Waters is a long, sprawling over eight minute piece, but the musical skill in which it is organized, mixing effects and chords so well, makes the song fly by at a soaringly, albeit dreamlike, state.
The project is dropping in about a week, so if you have the thunderous capacity to endure the experimental side of music, do so with She’s Excited! I really liked AloneTogether (feat. Joana Brabo) and a banger of a song with frequent collaborator, Mike Estabrook, Hello Brain. Moments of Sonder is definitely worth a listen… or two… or possibly even twelve.
