Trivia time: it's Kathrin's turn to play the guitar.
Last update: 27 October 2007
Obviously, this kind of thing isn't for everybody, especially not those who are averse to occasionally clunky second-language lyrics or to girlishness. However, there is an unaffected charm and sincerity about Wonderwall's music - to their credit, they were never bothered about being hip or trendy - which, if you give it a change, is genuinely refreshing. I've still never understood the credits for both "all guitars" and "additional guitars", though.
Witchcraft is sympathetically and unobtrusively produced, relying almost entirely on acoustic instruments, and ends up a very organic and naturalistic-sounding album. Its influences are clear - Paula Cole, early Suzanne Vega, Jewel Kilcher, Sarah McLachlan and so forth - even if the girls' youth (their average age at the time of the album's release was just 20) means that the songwriting sometimes falls short of its ambitions; pretty songs like "In April" aren't helped by lines like "my tears will create a lake of sorrow", while the lyric to "Dear Lifetime" is fumbled in sixth-form poetry, and that of "Sexy Girl" relies too much on "scha [sic; that's how they spell it in German] la la" and sounds unfinished. Only once is it ever actually bad, however: "Together Again" is musically unremarkable and lyrically wincingly banal ("plant a new apple-tree / sisters of night", indeed).
Nevertheless, the better songs show plenty of promise; for example, the lush title track - dating back to 2001, before Julia's 18th birthday - lacks only a proper middle and some fixing of lyrical slips ("that shimmering and glimmering is what I am" works, "it will make you loose [sic] if you think about shoes" is less convincing) to be a genuine success. "Jonny" is wistful and bittersweet, and is spoiled only by an undercooked lyric; "A Little Long Time" is the album's best toetapper, but could lose a few choruses towards the end; "Big Bang" is a charming and cheeky piece of self-promotion delivered in turn by all three girls a few words at a time; and the poignant "Who Am I" finishes things off with promises of greater emotional depth. There's a playfulness, too, about "Feelin' Blue" - strange noises in the background, reverb on the vocals at the start - which raises it above the level of filler.
Julia left during the recording of What Does It Mean? due to "musical differences", remaining on only one song, the well-crafted "One More Song For You"; "I'm sure there will follow so much more songs" [sic] she promises at the end, almost inaudibly, before the song reappears to fade out pensively. Evidence of personal conflicts surface in places, notably in the accusatory lyrics to "Sure" and "Appletree", this last with some positively hair-raising harmonies. There are two stabs at "issue" songs here which don't really work; "Princess Without Jewels" (anorexia nervosa) has nice singing but sounds crabbed, while "Feel Like Dying" (suicide) is too mellow to convince and highlights the fact that the album is two songs and about eight minutes too long. So too does "I Want You Babe", which fulfils the lack of promise of its title.
Elsewhere, the songs are generally tougher and more satisfying than on the debut, and at their best highlight the idiosyncratic but very effective ways in which Daniela and Kathrin use their voices. The two standouts are "Flying", which has a lovely wobble ("fly-yi-yi-i") in many of the choruses and absolutely glorious harmonies which more than make up for lines like "tomatoes on my bread", and "All I Want", whose catchy tune and defiant lyric of are capped with some terrific rhythmic vocal interplay. More rhythmic singing appears on the impressive title track, spoiled only by a pointless squelchy synthesiser and the "if only" of three voices rather than two. "Boys and Girls" and "Should I Cry", meanwhile, are pleasant pop songs which lighten up the second side of the record.
The cover of Come Along mentions two TV appearances in late 2004, suggesting some sinister forces at work. While the music within is pretty, gentle, intimate, and pleasant, it also lacks naive girlish charm of Witchcraft and the more experimental arrangements on What Does It Mean?; the rough edges have been smoothed away, and an overriding modesty replaces the idiosyncracies which make the first two records interesting. Only two songs really stand out: "Run" would have fitted on the second half of What Does It Mean? without apology, and the closing "Follow Me" - starting with multitracked voices and finishing by collapsing in laughter - stomps through a detailed lyric about a night-time cityscape and sustains interest with some surprising chord changes near the end. It's a frustrating indication of what Wonderwall were capable of when they tried.
As for the rest of the songs, they glide by nicely enough but blend into each other somewhat indistinguishably, much like the song titles: "Come Along", "Oughta Be", "Tonight", "Losing You", "Stay", "Me Again". There are some interesting and vaguely erotic lyrics on "Kind of Strange", which aren't helped by the unadventurous music; conversely, "Lonely In Bed" is the album's best ballad, but is spoiled by unadventurous lyrics. Worst of all is "Touch the Sky", co-written for the animated children's film Lauras Stern; while appropriate for the film, in this context it's a banal rerun of "Just More" from Witchcraft, complete with a whopping great clichéd key-change near the end.
|
The function of a band's first video is to introduce themselves to
prospective record-buyers as something new, exciting, and
different. Here we have our girls hanging out in what is presumably
their coven, which in a great moment near the end is revealed to be a
pyramidal structure of questionable appropriateness on top of a tall
building in the middle of a city (presumably Köln, where they come
from). Here they smile sweetly at the camera, mime to the song, smile
sweetly at the camera some more, and locate a failing relationship in
some kind of remote viewer - watch the concerned looks on their faces
when they decide to do something about it (act, girls, act!). Aside
from the stormy tone of the rather silly subplot, which jars with the
music, the lush decor of the visuals sets out the band's aesthetic
perfectly, but on the whole it's a bit too sugary-sweet for more
discriminating tastes. Kathrin's red shorts win her the inaugural
Strange Clothing award. Trivia time: it's Kathrin's turn to play the guitar. |
| Something isn't quite right here, is it? |
 | This song was a big hit in Germany, thanks to being featured in the soap opera Marienhof, although there's no reference to it here. Instead the band, augmented by Louis the dog, fight with cushions, eat strawberries, look at photographs and films of themselves, and smile sweetly at the camera a lot while occasionally miming to the song. None of this - apart from Kathrin's unnervingly bright lemon-yellow trousers - is at all a problem for the heterosexual male viewer, but it's nothing really to get excited about. |
| Gotta admire those trousers! |
 |
Mistakenly referred to as "You Call My Name" on the website, this
video is set in an outdoor rural idyll (on the porch with a hammock,
and later by a lake), a hazy bucolic setting which - accompanied by an
unnamed chicken - is perfect for the song. For no apparent reason they
disappear underwater at the end, except for the obviously scared
Kathrin. It's probably the most watchable of the three videos for the
first album; you used to be able to download a three-part "making of"
from the website, but now you have to buy it on DVD. Trivia time: it's Daniela's turn to play the guitar. |
| Admit it, guys, you know you would really. |
 |
This rather unnecessary clip, while nicely made, shows signs of being
put together in a hurry and is noticeably blander than the preceding
three. It consists of little more than a sequence of more-or-less
random images during which the girls wander serenely around a city
(presumably Köln again), smile sweetly a lot, and have slightly
strange effects on some of the people around them. The beginning,
where Julia mimes to the song with her guitar only to place it aside
when Kathrin shows up, is just clumsy. Trivia time: now it's Julia's turn to play the guitar. |
| Hope they cleaned their teeth first. |
 | Markedly different to the preceding videos, this continuously leftward-panning studio-based parade of multiple exposures is interestingly matched to the dynamics of the song, with the girls smiling sweetly while just singing or playing acoustic instruments in the verses (watch Daniela attack the güiro), graduating to noisier ones in the chorus (Daniela on the drums is particularly endearing), and vamping it up like proper rock chicks in the middle eight. Simple but effective, it quite properly gives Julia - in her last video with the band - the last word. Meanwhile, Kathrin, in a blue "Funk" tank-top, once again gets the Strange Clothing award. [For the record, there are 28 images of Julia and 20 each of the other two.] |
| "Endlich sind wir echte Rockstars". |
 | There's a very big Julia-shaped hole here; visually, Wonderwall as a duo are less than half what they were as a trio. Because the song is a downbeat ballad, this is the band's most static and least colourful video, and it's also the least memorable; the water, stark decor, and overturned chair are fitting for the song's sentiments, but it's all a bit run-of-the-mill. Moreover, the edited version of the song to which it's set makes it seem rushed. Kathrin, meanwhile, graduates to the Big Hair award. |
| Points for trying to hide Julia's absence, however clumsily. |
 | As befits a song from a film, this resorts to the tried-and-tested formula of mixing excerpts from the film with footage of the artist. Probably for contractual reasons, the version on the website is only two minutes long; in any case, Kati und eLa don't do much besides smiling sweetly and lipsyncing, and - Kathrin's distractingly short skirt aside - it's largely devoid of interest, much like the song. |
| Watch those knees, ladies! |