On
Virginia Wing s fourth full-length, the album s themes of isolation, dealing with trauma, and mental wellbeing reflect a collective despair that we are all feeling after a year without spontaneous human interactions. Right now, it feels like all our lives are private â the self that we show to others being just a preselected snapshot mediated through feeds and computer screens. Â
Having made Ecstatic Arrow in alpine Switzerland s picturesque setting in 2018, the Manchester trio had to settle on working from home like the rest of us did in 2020. Despite this, Private Life is testimony to the remarkable things one can achieve in times of crisis: Virginia Wing have produced one of the most fearless pop records of not only 2021 but the past few years. Glossier and more tumultuous than its predecessor, the band s idiosyncratic roots haven t been compromised, thanks to the dense, multi-layered arrangements and sporadic moments of strange, futuristic magic.Â
7.5/10
It’s a crazy world; as we’ve become more isolated, social media has become a forum for people to share every detail, opinion and non-event that happens to them, a state in which you can often feel more voyeur than follower.
Virginia Wing’s last album, Ecstatic Arrow, was recorded with the Swiss Alps as a backdrop. This time however, the group – now a trio following the addition of Christopher Duffin – took the only available course of action left to them by recording, ‘at home, in our tracksuit bottoms’.
Their collective mission according to singer Alice Merida Richards was to make, in ‘private LIFE’, something unique from 2020’s nightmarescape of recurring existential dread, whilst distilling into its fabric influences ranging from Prince to Timbaland to The Slits.
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A Private Life Is A Happy Life? Virginia Wing Interviewed Fourth album private LIFE was their easiest to make. It was everything going on around it that was the problem.
Itâs not always easy to trust in your own process, but four albums in
Virginia Wing feel like theyâre in their groove. âIt didnât feel as daunting doing it as maybe our others had doneâ says the groupâs vocalist, lyricist and co-arranger Merida Richards of their new album s enchantingly de-linear pop. âOur previous album [2018âs Ecstatic Arrow ] felt a bit more like âok! Weâre gearing up for something!â But it ended up being our easiest record to make and so for this one there wasnât all the apprehension and fear that I felt before.âÂ
Most of punk’s sonic hallmarks calcified into cliche long ago, but if there’s one trope still able to induce the shock of the old, it’s the dissonant, direct, stubbornly wonky female vocals that animate the work of the Slits, the Raincoats and X-Ray Spex. On Manchester trio Virginia Wing’s fourth album, frontwoman Alice Merida Richards evokes their thrillingly relatable voices with her own – a jerky, unmediated sprechgesang that combines vacant.