Colour Me Wednesday

Colour Me Wednesday might be England's best-kept musical secret. Drawing from a wide range of inspiration, they blend the twenty-tens pop-punk sound of their contemporaries (Doe, Muncie Girls, Personal Best) with an English indiepop pedigree, enriching skilful songwriting with a harmonic musicality reminiscent of older bands like The Sundays, and a trace of the plaintive inflections and subtly ironic politics of legendary groups McCarthy and The Housemartins. 'Counting Pennies in the Afterlife' also showcases the band's evolving alternative rock style, with increasingly-layered guitar and bass melodies now shared between mainstay Harriet Doveton and new addition Laura Coles, supported by the adept, intricate drumming of percussionist Jaca Freer. Frontwoman Jen Doveton's folk-esque vocals soar above this newly-broadened soundscape, across 11 tracks of heartfelt, engaging, spiky pop.
Album lyrics touch on the power politics of employment, personal relationships, DIY creativity & intersectional feminism. 'Boyfriend's Car' gilds an apocalyptic analogy of late capitalism fuelled by "unpaid labour" with deceptively-poppy overlapping harmonies, while 'Take What You Want' introduces elements of electronica into the mix, while targeting the Robin-Hood-in-reverse economics of privatisation & austerity. 'Sunriser', 'Exposure' and 'Tinfoil' tackle aspects of male privilege, and 'Edge of Everything' is the band's psychogeographic tribute to life just inside the London Orbital.