Release Date 8th October
By their own design, Oh Wonder have always flown a little below the public radar. Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West have played music together since 2014 and (on the down-low) been romantically involved since 2013. By the time they confirmed their engagement on ‘No One Else Can Wear Your Crown’, life was good: then of course the pandemic hit, and a 120-date world tour (plus, it transpired, much more besides) came crashing to the ground. This tumultuous and deeply personal time in their private lives is the subject of Oh Wonder’s fifth studio album, ‘22 Break’. Written autonomously in their home studio, the songs that form it are messages about their true feelings, expressed before they were able to find the words to say to one another. It’s a brutally honest and powerfully beautiful record, and one that lets listeners into the Oh Wonder fold like never before. As Josephine puts it: “We were just writing songs. We had no idea we were writing a break-up album.”