4/5 stars
On her debut album, Alison Wonderland (AKA Alex Scholler) seems intent on showing that ‘bangerz’ doesn’t have to be a dirty word – and she very nearly pulls it off.
The unrelenting bass in her 2014 single ‘I Want U’ probably had you hooked on Wonderland’s peculiar brand of dance-pop-meets-dub, even if you kept it a secret guilty pleasure. But the question for her full-length was whether it would have enough depth to sustain 12 tracks. Lead single ‘U Don’t Know’ doesn’t provide much of an answer, and lands very close to her earlier work – the tried and tested formula of placing saccharine vocals over a jarring beat. It’s catchy, but not that exciting.
But delve a little further, and it turns out those crutches disguise genuinely interesting structural twists. ‘Already Gone’, featuring Brave and Lido, is slow, sparse and a little weird. But it’s title track ‘Run’ that really straddles the line between straight-up club jam and the strange zone Wonderland has carved out for herself. Maybe it has something to do with her being a classically trained cellist – at times the song feels highly orchestrated.
It’s no secret that Wonderland is as much a songwriter as a DJ/producer. So go dance your arse off – no shame.
