Can Dream Wife Hit The Top 40 UK Album Charts?

There are many plagues of the modern world. Internet passwords. Staying over at a friend’s house and waking up first. The shrinking of the Toblerone bar.

But most of all, Dry January.

If ever there was a miserable, overly-long, grim, sleet-and-rain-ridden month of the year to drink your way through and forget, it was January. Instead, we turn over new leaves and willingly decide to enter a state of sobriety that makes the month seem to last for at least sixty days. Sixty days of rain and freezing gun-metal-grey cloud with nothing stronger than a J20 to wash it away with.

So what a relief it is to enter February.

And if February is feeling a little quiet for you, there’s the perfect solution in the shape of the debut album by Dream Wife.

Here’s the executive summary:

• Satirically named Indie pop band with members hailing from Reykjavik, London and Brighton.
• Rakel Mjöll (vocals), Alice Go (guitar, vocals), Bella Podpadec (bass, vocals).
• Formed after meeting at art college in Brighton. The band was originally an art project. The trio formed a pretend band, went on tour in Canada and made a fake “rockumentary” for display at an art gallery. It turned out their “art project” was better than most bands, and they signed a record deal.

As formation stories go, it’s quite a good one. None of which would matter, of course, unless the music was good…

The eponymous debut album was released last week and has now hit the heady heights of #29 on the Midweek U.K. Album Charts – a fantastic achievement for a debut. It is also as wonderful and noisy a slice of indie pop/rock that you will hear all year.

There’s a hugely appealing mix of influences and ideas on display here: there’s positive messaging and calling out of chauvinism in the lyrical content (I am not my body / I am somebody), catchy choruses with girl group handclaps (“Hey Heartbreaker”) and harmonies (“Fire”), a tender ballad (“Love Without Reason”) the kind of angular riffs that tend to proliferate in early Strokes and Franz Ferdinand records and a vocal delivery that reminds the listener of Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, if Karen O had Bjork’s Icelandic-English accent.

Oh, and in FUU, we have a turbo-charged version of a song originally released as a single in 2016. It has lost the Spice Girls verse, presumably for copyright reasons, but which also makes the song a little more urgent, and the result is the most fun, maniacal and slightly unsettling / amusing song that will appeal to serial killers, rebellious teenagers, fans of swearing and hairdressers alike. You’ll have to listen to the track to find out why – here’s the original version:

Overall It’s the spirit of that debut album by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs that most stands out as an influence.

A last push at the weekend and that midweek position might just become official…

You know what to do…there’s even a lovely limited splattered/clear vinyl indies-only version.

This is a perfect way to brighten up your February and is so bright and breezy, so good, you may just want to give up drinking so you can appreciate every last note.

Dry February? With this album in tow, that might just be something you could get through…

(Update 5th Feb 2017: The album hit number sixty in the album charts).