#2091 The Avalanches - Wildflower

You had every reason to have low expectations for Wildflower. 16 years after an impossible 3,000+ sample opus, the window for a true follow-up was closed - surely the magic was gone, maybe the money'd run out. Early singles sounded like Avalanches gone pop, or unlike Avalanches altogether.

And as you tuck in with cautious optimism, signs are shaky. The warbles opening Because I'm Me, the too-bold samples and hip-hop verse-structured Frankie Sinatra - there's certainly nothing to suggest the mysterious, encompassing world-building of Since I Left You.

But the album unfolds and it all starts to make sense. That lilting pulse sets in. Signature flute flutters and vocal touches and the thinnest implication of a story and analog knob-turn DJism dynamics weave themselves into : holy shit: an honest to god Avalanches record.

And it blooms from there.

This is a different kind of party, less bopping beside dim-lit coffee tables, more sinking into sunlit couches. Colours abound, patterns shift, beams of daylight twist. If I Was a Folkstar and Harmony deliver some of the duo's most beautiful Beachboy layerings ever, and the entire second half melts out from under itself. There's no burst of disco light, Live at Dominoes raveups - Wildflower's happy to roll out a blanket on the grass and fade out of view in a sea of sounds.

It even gets its Frontier Psychiatrist moment out of the way early - The Noisy Eater's a shimmering fucking blast and gives you your last jolt before the 11-track fadeout.

--

The album steals my thunder a bit: all the words I'd use to describe it show up right in the song titles: Sunshine, Colours, Harmony, and most of all _Kaleidoscopic_. It's the perfect word for the album: packed with familiar things splintered into something stranger and more colorful and disordered into new beautiful patterns.

Let's stretch that metaphor to breaking: it's also a bit of a novelty. All that second-half driftoff is nice if you're in a very specific mindset, but I missed the way SILY kept the energy up, kept you wrapped up in its world. Wildflower's a bit more of a wild child (flower child?), wandering off to let you take in the day on your own, and it can feel a bit like half an album - just about every memorable moments on the first side.

Still! It's a wholly unique thing, another dose of magic from one of the most original electronic acts out there - an endless summer flipside to their first album's endless nights - changing minds instead of longitudes to make life last forever. A expectation-defier that might take years to come to appreciate at its own achievement* 4.5/5

* Do we dare hope for a third? Or better yet, with the momentum of Smile, GBV, and now Wildflower, is there hope for the other great reappearances? You paying attention out there Jeff Mangum?