Wookalily is a five-piece female alt-folk/folk-rock band from Ireland that really defy description. In addition to more conventional instruments they can at any times have great four-part vocal harmonies, low bowed double bass, flutes, banjo, mandolin, concertina, trumpet and whatever else they feel like adding to the song in question.
These ladies are multi-instrumentalists and quite adventurous, making their music fascinating and frequently unpredictable listening.
Everything Is Normal Except the Little Things Inside My Head (referred to as EINETLTIMH after this point) is their second album. It took over two years to produce due to scary circumstances.
I was part of the Kickstarter campaign for the album, which got delayed when a band member was diagnosed with breast cancer. Everything was understandably put on hold until this had been taken care of. Fortunately it ended well with a full recovery, which was the only thing I cared about. You never know just how things will turn out while things are going on.
This became a time of reflection for everybody. With their momentum coming to a screeching halt, priorities change, people feel different about things, and a lot of the album was finished with a different mindset than it started with.
The title of the album is as much a reflection of this as anything else. “Everything Is Normal” is something you may tell yourself, and even people around yourself, to keep things going. You want everybody, including yourself, to believe that things are fine; that nothing is going on.
The front cover of the CD displays the title as “Everything Is Normal”, but when you open the digipack you see the rest of the album title which reveals the full truth. There is often something more going on, but it is often hidden.
Listening to the album works the same way – it is just like opening up a book and getting things revealed to you. There are many thoughts here. Some of them seem to be related to the cancer incident, while others obviously touch on other matters. The lyrics on this album are real, human, and personal.
It is no surprise, then, that EINETLTIMH is rather different than the happy-go-lucky and bouncy feel of the first album All the Waiting While (2014). After everything that went down that is perfectly understandable, and this has likely become a stronger artistic statement for it.
However, if I hadn’t been part of the Kickstarter, and not known anything about what went on, the drastic change in style between the first and second albums would have puzzled me. And possibly the delay between them.
This year’s effort touches more on various nuances of melancholy, but the characteristics of the band are retained. Their slogan “five women, ten instruments” is still at the core of it all, although they clearly play more instruments now than when that slogan was coined.
This is folkish pop music played with skill and ambition, sometimes intertwining with genres like blues-rock, punk, catchy pop, and passages with a downright progressive flair. Whatever they are up to, they are never boring.
The release of this album close the book on a difficult chapter for the band. The music stands tall and I hope it can help them get to the next stage in their careers.
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