Wallows: Nothing Happens [ATLANTIC]

Why you'll love it

This is the LA trio's debut album, produced with Grammy winner John Congleton and including "Are You Bored Yet?" with Clairo. It took Wallows to The Tonight Show and their first Coachella.

This edition

• Original 11-track album
• Includes "Are You Bored Yet?" with Clairo

About the album

Dylan Minnette, Cole Preston and Braeden Lemasters met in a music class as kids and played together for years under names like The Feaver and The Narwhals before settling on Wallows in 2017. Minnette was also busy acting at the time, in Netflix's 13 Reasons Why. A run of singles and the Spring EP built the buzz; Nothing Happens is where it all came together.

The three of them wrote and produced the album with John Congleton, swapping guitars, keys, bass and drums between them. "Are You Bored Yet?" with Clairo is the breezy, bittersweet single that got everybody's attention, "Scrawny" is a scrappy, upbeat bop with a boxing-match video, "Sidelines" glides on a lovely melody, and "Only Friend" and "Do Not Wait" bookend the record with a coming-of-age ache. Critics heard echoes of The Shins and Death Cab for Cutie.

They played it on the 2019 and 2020 tour and later filmed socially distanced shows at the Roxy for fans stuck at home. For an album called Nothing Happens, a remarkable amount does, which we'd normally have a quiet word about.

Also at Kops: more Wallows on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Atlantic (cat# 585083-1), the 2019 album.