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"Ultralife" is the second full length studio album by alt-pop duo Oh Wonder, released on 14 July 2017 through Island Records. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 61, based on 4 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
User Album Review
“Ultralife” serves as a manifesto for what the band are now trying to achieve: the same friendly pop with a new technicolour intensity. Maximalism looks good on them. The chorus is a joyous mass of jig-like strings and percussion. Second single "Lifetimes" is about climate change, and if the Paris Agreement ever required a theme tune, it could do a lot worse than this slick pop cut. The duo have a newfound knack for hooky phrases: like “Ultralife”'s "take a look at me now", the "doin' it right / doin' it right" refrain of “Lifetimes” is sharp and breezy. This sonic turnaround is especially impressive given that Vander Gucht and West have pulled it off entirely alone, shaping and producing the album around the TFL bus timetable in their home studio.
Overall, more is definitively more when it comes to Oh Wonder. While they aren’t designed to make pop bangers, they clearly have an ear for the kind of instrumentation and production tricks that enable them to cut to the feeling much faster than naked piano. Let’s hope the future holds a bit more exuberance and a bit less niceness. Reviewed by Eleanor Graham for thelineofbestfit.com.
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