Highly polished Texas indie folk pop for highly polished indie folk kids.
When you listen to END OF THE WORLD, Wild Child’s fifth album, you ask yourself where you know these songs from and whether they have always been there. The duo from Austin/Texas tries their best to give their compositions a familiar feeling of well-being, the content is about relationships and their end. Singer Kelsey Wilson and bandmate Alexander Beggins are masters of their craft: With Wilson, the smooth songwriting meets an excellent singer whose voice contains traces of country, Americana, Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish. Greetings to American college radio.
What begins as an intimate folk song gets an orchestra with strings, wind instruments and piano as it progresses, plus a bit of e-guitar and synth bubbling as arbitrary snippets of effects, can’t hurt. At their best, the duo sound like the poppy siblings of The Kills (“End Of The World,” “Dear John”), at their worst like hapless country girl Taylor Swift early in his career. And always: Like highly polished American indie folk pop for highly polished American indie folk kids. But while you’re desperately looking for that one moment of non-compliance, that’s when you suddenly catch yourself singing along.
Author: Michael Prenner