Oh Wonder, the English alt-pop duo, has today released their beautiful, surprise new album, 22 Break, alongside a stunning short film accompanying the record in full. The album features their newest single, “Rollercoaster Baby,” released yesterday.
The band has also confirmed a now sold-out, global, online broadcast of their recent London show at The Albany, taking place on their YouTube on October 14th at 1pm EST. A 52-date world tour for 2022 is on sale now, following an eventful period for the unique London duo, who just scored back-to-back top 10s with 2020’s No One Else Can Wear Your Crown album, on top of 2.7 billion streams and 1.7 million adjusted album sales.
22 Break is the soundtrack to a band, and couple, almost broken – but ultimately made – by the pandemic. It’s a personal, powerfully honest account of those universal breakup themes like loneliness, inadequacy, resentment, and fears for the future, as heightened by making music from your shed in lockdown. In the pandemic’s early phases, Anthony and Josephine worked hard to fill the void created by 2020. Anthony decided to open a coffee shop in Peckham called Nola, which soon saw round-the-block queues and put many of their touring crew back in work. As they started working on new music, however, all the unspoken tensions between a pair who’d never really known a relationship outside of the band tumbled out. Ultimately, though, the album that almost ended Oh Wonder proved to be the making of them: 22 Break is a cathartic, quietly hopeful project, the light at the end of the tunnel that was Oh Wonder’s quite particular pandemic.
Not many bands can make a break-up album that culminates in them tying the knot – but then again, Oh Wonder have never been like other bands. Coming out of 22 Break and all the soul-searching that it forced them to do, Josephine and Anthony got married in August this year. Whilst their relationship now has its own space to exist outside of Nola and Oh Wonder, the duo’s crossroads period has accidentally resulted in their most profound work to date. Opening up to their fans and each other, the ‘Make or Break?’ poised by 22 Break is not so much a question as an active choice – to be as honest as possible, to move forward, and to begin a brand new chapter in the story of Oh Wonder.
OH WONDER – 2022 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES:
MAY 08 2022 // HISTORY, TORONTO, ON
MAY 10 2022 // MTELUS, MONTREAL, QC
MAY 11 2022 // HOUSE OF BLUES, BOSTON, MA
MAY 13 2022 // 9.30 CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C.
MAY 14 2022 // THEATRE OF LIVING ARTS (TLA), PHILADELPHIA, PA
MAY 15 2022 // BROOKLYN STEEL, BROOKLYN, NY
MAY 17 2022 // THE VIC THEATRE, CHICAGO, IL
MAY 18 2022 // FIRST THEATRE, MINNEAPOLIS, MN
MAY 20 2022 // OGDEN THEATRE, DENVER, CO
MAY 21 2022 // THE DEPOT, SALT LAKE CITY, UT
MAY 23 2022 // SHOWBOX SODO, SEATTLE, WA
MAY 24 2022 // VOGUE THEATER, VANCOUVER, BC
MAY 25 2022 // ROSELAND THEATER, PORTLAND, OR
MAY 28 2022 // FOX THEATER, OAKLAND, CA
MAY 29 2022 // HOUSE OF BLUES, ANAHEIM, CA
MAY 31 2022 // THE WILTERN, LOS ANGELES, CA
