Wasuremono - Me And The Noise (2026) [Hi-Res]

There’s nothing wrong with music intended to spark joy and get people moving, but there needs to be something else driving those emotions, and you just don’t get it on the new Wasuremono album, Me and the Noise.

THE SKINNY: Whenever the band have made albums in the past, William Southward has treated the whole thing as a solo endeavour, essentially locking himself in his shed, while committing to the writing, recording, mixing and mastering of previous albums. It’s gone pretty well, as the band’s success is impossible to deny.

On the newest album, Me and the Noise, new names have been brought in to assist with both the mixing and mastering of the record. Having people with various writer credits, you would think, would help elevate the sound and give listeners a record that they can really sink their teeth into, but everything on this new album, from the quality of the sound to the songs themselves, just seems somewhat soulless.

In the press release for the album, Southward was quite honest about the fact that a lot of the time, when writing, he doesn’t focus on specific feelings or themes, and instead starts with things like melody and meaningless words.

“I don’t write about particular things,” he explains. “Sometimes I will plaster a load of nonsensical words over it, while I’m looking for a melody. I love it when choruses and words pop out by complete chance and it’s always a win when you can connect the words to those sorts of melodies and it flows.”

If you’re an indie pop fan and not bothered about substance, then this is an album that you will likely be able to sink your teeth into. However, this kind of lackadaisical writing approach that starts with an earworm as the foundation and then has meaning piled on top makes for a pretty unstable structure. You can nod your head to these tunes and tap your feet, sure, but that added depth, the thing that takes a track from good to great, is missing.

Me and the Noise certainly isn’t a bad record. The vocals are nice, the instrumentation is solid, and the choruses are catchy, but it’s the catchiness of those choruses which also seems to let the whole thing down. By latching onto a toe-tapping melody and working backwards, these songs have nowhere to move. In full, the record sounds more like a compilation of examples of pop songs, rather than pop songs themselves.