Review Summary: …and no fulfilment.
It is hard to categorise Wild Child into a specific group. They seem like either a band that is a few steps away from becoming truly stylistically complete, or a band that is a few years into being a shill copy of what they once used to be. But considering the fact that even on their fourth release they sound exactly the same, still slightly unintentionally fatigued and so soft it might actually hurt their music, the former be the truth.
And truth be told,
Expectations has a solid reserve of decent tunes, pretty melodies and likeable instrumental work. However, that very softness that creates a sense of tiresomeness is what essentially drags this album down. Everything sounds like a mere idea of what it could be, had the band actually given its song-writing some punch. And while the songs like “Eggshells”, “Think It Over” or “Goodbye Goodnight” have that special growing power, but even then you’ll need at least a bulk of repeated listens to get into it. The only actually paying off cuts on here are “Expectations” and “My Town”.
If anything positive can be said about
Expectations, it is undoubtedly the instrumental palette. The fact that this is a seven member collective is apparent through the amount of different brass or string sections that pop up. However, it still always comes down to the fact that the band plays it so softly and inoffensively that in the end all the potentially impressive instrumentation is drowned.
That is really it. There is hardly anything to talk about.
Expectations is all about expectations indeed. You expect that smooth sax or trumpeting on the background to rise up and turn engrossing, but it simply remains still, until it’s stale, giving way to the breathy vocals and the muted rhythm section.
