The four members of Wevie Stonder spent 15 years enjoying life before they found the time again to make new music together. And as in the noughties, they are back on Manchester label Skam Records, even though their sound has about as much in common with the label’s other artists as TikTok has with real life.
The Brighton natives are now scattered across Europe and in the meantime have obviously experienced some obscure things in the rabbit holes of digital hypercapitalism. Wevie Stonder have always been a mixture of tongue-in-cheek, Dadaism, and precise salt in the wound. Thus, “Sure Beats Living” can be heard as an incredibly funny and at the same time astonishingly musical and original commentary on today.
From the failed YouTube tutorial on “That’s Magic” to advertising for unnecessary new products on “Carpet Squares” (but Hey, the installation really is easier now!), the madness of telephone waiting queues on “Customer Services” to genre-Tindering on “Ready”, Wevie Stonder create a brilliantly absurd and at the same time incredibly accurate short journey through our timeline. Best of all, they manage to keep “Sure Beats Living” from turning into a on-off comedy album that dies with its joke. This is not just thanks to their multi-layered British humor. The twelve entertaining tracks are musically so diverse, right up-to-date with today’s sound, and amazingly well produced to have it on repeated rewinds.
