Dream Wife may in many respects be a ‘fun’ band, and entertaining live, but lyrically, there’s very much a seriousness about them that’s nowhere more evident than on their latest single, ‘Who Do You Wanna Be?’, taken from their upcoming album ‘Social Lubrication’, out next month.
They describe the song as being “about running on the capitalist treadmill and falling face first on the pavement. Hollow slogans, social media activism without action, leftist infighting, monetising feminism, 'girl boss', all soul crushing nonsense. Capitalism consumes everything. We should tear down the unreachable anxiety filled idea of perfectionism and move from hyper individualised narrative to collective action to create hopeful, rebellious, collective, systems of care. This is a call to arms for change.”
Often, when bands explain a song’s meaning, I find it hard to reconcile or extrapolate from the actual lyrics. Not so here: Dream Wife are direct without being clunky, and hit the mark with lines like ‘Exhausted by the pressure to feel somewhat empowered / it’s only 8AM /
and I haven’t even showered’ and ‘When I see another empty slogan tryna dictate my life / can’t you see my pockets are running dry? / A consumer consumed with the idea of a good time’.
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And while the lines are pitched against a bouncy bassline and punchy beat, there’s some twitchy guitar work that’s pure post-punk, and it all breaks out into a driving chorus. With the squeaky vocals that are equally cutesy and sassy, it’s like Aqua meets Gang of Four as filtered through Elastica. Catchy, succinct, and capturing the zeitgeist, it’s a cracking single.
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