London duo Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West, aka Oh Wonder, quickly gained attention from fans and critics alike when they set themselves the ambitious challenge of writing and releasing a song every month for a year.
“Everyone said that when we started, it's like 'oh, this is very ambitious', and we, innocent and wide-eyed, had absolutely no idea what it meant in principle,” laughs Josephine. “So we embarked on this project really as a way of setting up a writing portfolio; we wanted to be songwriters and considered as a writing duo.
“We set ourselves the adventure and the challenge of once a month, principally, to challenge ourselves and to instil structure, deadlines and routine to make sure that by the end of the year we had a writing portfolio and a show-reel of 13 songs we had written. In hindsight it was pretty wild, but we loved it.”
Both Josephine and Anthony were initially involved in other musical projects and had to commit to a rigorous writing schedule to meet the mammoth task. “We both had other full-time projects going so we could only really allocate a day or two for the writing and maybe two or three days for the production. So some of the songs took four days in the month and some of them took the whole month, it kind of varied. The principle was the same: we wrote the song at an acoustic piano and made sure the song held its own as an acoustic version.
“Then we took it to production and recorded the piano as a guide and built up the tracks, laid down the vocals and mixed it. Towards the end of the project we had a little more time, which is a lovely luxury to have, because we'd given up our other projects that we had on the go right at the start and we were able to spend the whole month doing it.”
With their first track uploaded last September, a year on and some 33+ million online streams later, Oh Wonder will release their debut album early next month. Although they will be making their Australian debut at Falls Festival and Southbound at the end of this year, Oh Wonder already has an emotional connection with Australia. “Anthony's actually half Australian,” Josephine explains.
“So a lot of his family live over in Australia: grandma, cousins, aunties, uncles… we went out a couple of years ago to hang out; we both had such a good time and absolutely loved the country and the people are gorgeous. The weather is insane and we’re really excited.”
Even though the shows are months away, Oh Wonder are already prepping for what may be an even bigger challenge than producing a song every month: the Australian summer. “It was really funny,” Josephine laughs, “our bassist yesterday was like 'oh man, I need to get in shape if we're going to be on the beach at Byron Bay’ and I was like 'this is so good, we get to be on a beach at Christmas time!’ It's so alien for it to be hot at Christmas time.”
While Josephine and Anthony are performers in their own right (Josephine also produces music as LAYLA), they are set to play their first gig at the prestigious London Institute Of Contemporary Art, which sold out in 12 hours. “We're still mid-rehearsal and still never played a live show, which is odd. I think we're both a little bit nervous, just because we've been living with these songs for a year and the anticipation of playing them live has been building for so long. But more than anything we are incredibly excited to give these songs a new life and a new breathing space.
“And also to meet the people that have been listening to our music, we've never met a fan thus far because we've never done anything public or anything live. So that will be really special to see a room full of people who have been listening to our music, it's going to be magical.”
Oh Wonder play Falls Festival:
28 Dec, 2015 until 1 Jan, 2016 in Lorne, Vic (est. 1993) 18+ event
29 Dec, 2015 until 1 Jan, 2016 in Marion Bay, Tas (est. 2003) All ages
31 Dec, 2015 until 3 Jan, 2016 in Byron, NSW (est. 2013) 18+ event
Oh Wonder also play Southbound Festival 9 January. The duo's self-titled debut album is available now.
