Having spent the past few years honing their sound in London’s vibrant grassroots music venues, wonderbug has bottled up the buzz of live music in their debut EP scrap. The indie rock quartet delivers a soft yet gritty exploration of young adulthood; Edie Chesters’ voice bursts with unbridled emotional depth, balanced by Ben Chesters’ and Ollie McDaid’s laid-back tones. Tied together by Otto Fitzgerald’s bass, Ben’s drums, and Ollie’s guitar, wonderbug is carving out an exciting space for themselves on the British indie scene, for which “scrap” provides a promising start.
Throughout the project, there is a constant push and pull, a sense of all-too-familiar emotional turbulence: opening track “on the outside” gently draws you in with soft guitar strums and tender vocals before descending into a heavy medley of drums and electric guitar. “I’m on the outside looking in / Every day spent with you is another spent with me,” Edie muses, her voice soaring over thundering instrumentals with an acute rawness that ripples through your headphones and into your chest. “slowly but surely” follows a similar pattern, shifting our focus back and forth between sombre verses—“darting in circles, I’m losing it / I hold my breath back, I’m wearing thin— and grungier guitar interludes. And yet, the tracks don’t feel repetitive or predictable. Layers of sound build and collapse, rising and falling as naturally as breathing—scrap feels energetic, dynamic, alive.
Its themes are straightforward enough—friendships, self-doubt, and the uncertainties of adulthood—but driven by a grungy undercurrent that feels a little rough around the edges, providing some refreshing authenticity. Coming in at over five minutes long, “salt in the wound” untangles the pain of platonic betrayal. Fuzzy background vocals add a sense of underlying warmth to the track, offering some comfort as they envelop Edie’s emotive voice: “My tongue is tied, you’ve crossed the line, passed the point of compromise / My tongue is tied, it hurts that you hold back your truth / I feel the salt in my wounds,” she admits with a tinge of bitterness. Gradually escalating to a rousing peak, vocals are suddenly interrupted by a frantic guitar rhythm; a sonic embodiment of salt, once again, being rubbed into the wound.
“answers” approaches this pensive attitude from a different angle, opening with Ben’s relaxed drum beat and Otto’s mellow bassline to create a sense of jaded nonchalance at yet another failed romance. “Though I guess you’re quite nice / I fear we don’t align / Oh what a waste of time / we’re always looking for the answers,” Edie sings wryly, hinting at the scrap’s punchy final song. “what a waste of time” returns to questions of fate, timing, and the inevitable ephemerality of many young relationships. Edie floats between lively warped vocals and angelic background sighs, singing back and forth with fellow vocalist Ollie—“Oh what a waste of time / slow and steady wins the race / It’s all that I can take from you / I’ve read the signs can’t read the room.” The result is a conversational track oozing with laid-back candor, inviting listeners to reflect and relate without taking themselves too seriously. Indeed, by “what a waste of time,” wonderbug seems to have reached a cheerful acceptance about the constant fluxes in our relationships and emotions; a sentiment that’s mirrored by their bubbly sound as the track closes with cascading vocals and a cathartic guitar riff.
In just five bright songs, wonderbug bares their hearts to listeners while asserting themselves as high-energy performers. scrap, as its title suggests, ultimately feels like an ode to the messy mix of emotions surfacing as we grow up; Edie’s declaration of “slow and steady wins the race” in the project’s final track encapsulates the overall optimistic tone of the project, reminding us to give ourselves grace and give things time.
