Eaves Wilder – Little Miss Sunshine

Steadily releasing music from 2020 onwards, Eaves Wilder began gaining traction and press acclaim, nabbing support slots with the likes of The Libertines and Trampolene. Then, things essentially ground to a halt.

“There’s so much noise in the world, and so many people making music, and I felt like I was one of them,” she explained in a recent interview. “I thought: ‘I need to figure out if I’ve got something to say that I think I could add’.”

Thankfully, the North London artist’s time away was time well spent, as her debut album, Little Miss Sunshine, is her most confident body of work to date. Co-produced with Andy Savours (a previous collaborator of My Bloody Valentine and The Killers, among others), Wilder offers up a record with a direct point of view, ready to say her piece.

With this album, the singer rejects the traditional expectations of womanhood, even using the album title as a sarcastic comment on them. Take Mountain Sized, a huge shoegaze track that humorously tears apart these ideals to replace them with her own desires, while English Tea sounds like a wonky lullaby over self-aware people-pleasing lyrics.

There are biting critiques on topics such as eating disorders (Daisy Chain Reaction) and abusive men (Just Say No!) – Wilder also focuses this lens on her own experiences at the receiving end of endless opinions on Everybody Talks, doubling up as a takedown of today’s overwhelming amount of content, as frustration boils over in its final few seconds.

It’s evident Little Miss Sunshine is indebted to 90s musical leanings – like Hurricane Girl‘s grunge and the chiming Britpop of The Great Escape – yet Wilder’s ethereal vocals and the album’s production give it a crystal-clear 21^st-century sound, bringing everything together to create a dreamy and atmospheric record.

Rather than rushing to release this album and instead taking a step back, Wilder absolutely made the right move, delivering a well-rounded debut that sounds authentically her, which will be sure to please both her longtime fans and win new ones over. As she gears up for a summer of festival appearances, be sure to keep an eye on her – if this record is anything to go by, she’s only just getting started.