Wallis Bird // Wallis Bird

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Wallis Bird. The opening track, ‘Dress my Skin and Become What I’m Supposed To’, is a rather gorgeous acoustic song with a touch of Danish band Mímas about it, which gave me some very high hopes for the rest of the album, but what happens next is frankly baffling, as it turns into a kind of early/mid ‘90s rock thing with more than a sniff of The Cranberries permeating the next couple of tracks. And then it shifts again into something else, with a smattering of Icelandic experimentalists múm dropped into the already overpopulated mix, before continuing to move in and out of different styles and genres, never fixing on anything or really exploring any of them especially thoroughly. There’s quite a few vocal references to Alanis Morissette throughout too, which I’m not sure is ever a good thing, even if you’re Alanis Morrissette.

I can’t help but feel that, whilst Wallis Bird is clearly a talented songwriter, she needs to have a bit more focus when putting an album together. That’s not to say that everything should sound the same, far from it, but there needs to be something to hold the songs together and this album just doesn’t really have it.

5/10 BBV