alt-J: An Awesome Wave - Review

This is a review for my month long Album-a-Day adventure in Jan. 2022. if you want to read the other reviews, check out the original post.

Like most folks in the mid 2010s, I heard Breezeblocks on my local alt rock radio station for the first time, and thought “what a weird but catchy song”. That theme was…further explored in the rest of the album that Breezeblocks was on, An Awesome Wave. It was a super weird album that I found oddly catchy at times. The author of this blog doesn’t condone usage of mind-altering substances, but this seems like a pretty good album to make that happen with.

The harmonies you hear in the first interlude and dispersed elsewhere in the album are some of the most provoking I’ve heard. It was almost haunting, and also was weird like the rest of the album. To be clear: weird is not a bad thing here.

The instrumentation is well done - a great blend of electronic and acoustic elements throughout the whole album. I think they’ve done one of the better jobs in this groove of indie for making the productions sound both organic and electronic at the same time (I think Sylvan Esso does this really well also) and I appreciated the sounds that went into that. The vocal performances are also incredibly unique and add a lot to that blend of styles in the production.

Overall, this was a really cool album that I’m going to listen to more. It’s a little weird but that’s what makes it so dang cool.

Score: 7.5/10

Favorite Tracks: Tesselate, Breezeblocks, Dissolve Me, Matilda

One Recommendation: You’ve probably heard Breezeblocks, so check out Dissolve Me.