I always imagine that Wasuremono live in a strange animated otherworld, one fashioned from vibrant colours and the broken remnants of 80’s pop bands, sweets with unacceptably high sugar content and psychedelic lift music, Japanese screen prints and haunted music shops. I know this isn’t the case but who wants their favourite bands to seem as everyday and normal as the rest of us? Not me.
Neither is there anything everyday about the music they make, music which falls into a crack between dream-pop, indie and shoegaze, which often feels innocent…childlike almost but which is also richly textured, cleverly constructed and more than anything, wonderfully unique. Are You OK? sees them riding on a wave of sound that is both indicative of what they do and highly commercial. Okay, maybe not highly commercial but that is the fault of the music market not the band. Maybe commercial in that cultish and underground way that say, The Flaming Lips are, the one band who has navigated territory even remotely close to the lush and extraordinary sonic pastures that Wasuremono call home.
Those familiar with the band will see this song as a consolidation of all the things that are great about them, the drifting haziness, the infectiousness, the soft edges, the strangeness and those coming new to the band have probably joined the story as it is about to get really exciting. As a first taste of the album of the same name due out in the summer, this single, not to mention a planned run of festival dates, places Wasuremono in a position ripe to make the leap from underground darlings to mainstream oddities…and I mean that in the nicest of ways.
May 4th – Live at Leeds, Leeds
May 5th – Stag & Dagger Festival, Glasgow
May 10th – The Great Escape, Brighton
May 24th – Dot To Dot Festival, Manchester
May 25th – Dot To Dot Festival, Bristol
May 26th – Dot To Dot Festival, Nottingham
June 19th – Sebright Arms, London
July 19th – Bluedot Festival (Main Stage), Cheshire
July 26th – Farmfestival, Somerset
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[…] got to the point now that any time I find myself coming back to Wasuremono after any significant time away from their music, it feels slightly like coming home. Or at least […]