Track Listing

1. Fell Down The Stairs
2. Nights Of The Living Dead
3. Bessa
4. You and I Misbehaving
5. Reckless
6. Let It Rain
7. Shake It Out
8. A Perfect Fit
9. I Always knew
10. The Ice Storm, Big Gust, And You

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57360 in Music
• Released on: 2006-02-13
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

why has noone being ranting praise over this album yet?!
Rarely inspired to write reviews, I saw that noone had said anything on the fantastic Tilly and the Wall and felt the need to re-right the balance of the universe. I bought this album off the back of a playlist by Michael Stipe of REM who had put Night Of The Living Dead on his top 10. That was two months ago and I pretty much haven't stopped playing this, I dont need to trouble myself with skipping the bad songs because there arent any, and I dont need to think about what mood im in and reflect it accordingly with my choice of music on my ipod because this album is just as perfect for when your getting ready to go out and when you wake up in the morning feeling like you have been unsed to unclog the blender.
Mainly female vocals, Tilly and The Wall includes a tap dancer who tapdances to the rhythms of the songs. It's amazing. If you aren't sure, then the songs to (legally!) download to check it out are:
You and I Misbehaving - the night before
I Always Knew - the morning after
But like I say, from beginning to end it's really really painfully good. Its a mystery to me that every man and his dog owns Death Cab and Modest Mouse and noone knows about Tilly. Buy it if you like Rilo Kiley, Sleepy Jackson, or the more upbeat of Saddle Creek artists. For that matter, just buy it anyway, if you hate it you can always give it to one of your musically superior friends

A highlight of 2006 (sort of!!).
Like Rilo Kiley, Azure Ray, Maria Taylor, Jenny Lewis and the Wilson Twins, and The Desaparecidos, Tilly and the Wall are part of the Saddle Creek/Team Love collective headed by Bright Eyes' singer/songwriter Corner Oberst. Like the members of those bands, many of the band members here have collaborated with Bright Eyes in the past, with at least half of the principle members having originally been members of Oberst's pre-fame band Park Ave., whilst vocalist Neely Jenkins famously lent backing vocals to the first Bright Eyes album, 1998's Letting Off the Happiness. Like that album, Wild Like Children is a collection of innocent enough, lo-fi indie pop anthems, sprinkled lightly with a touch of teen angst and a reflective nostalgia, and captured in a suitably shambolic fashion on a set of Casio keyboards and strummed acoustic guitars.

The sound of Wild Like Children is generally less melodramatic and self-pitying than Oberst's own (better known) work, with Tilly and the Wall favouring a chiming pop sound replete with bubbling keyboard melodies, hand claps, boy/girl call and response backing vocals, scattering percussion and the tap dancing prowess of Jamie Williams!! The substitution of a real "rock" drummer in favour of a tap dancer isn't as damaging as you might imagine, with Tilly... overcoming the novelty factor to instil their songs with a propulsive beat and a finger tapping rhythm. You only have to listen to the insanely catchy Nights of the Living Dead to see how the clamouring cacophony of percussive effects merging with the rat-a-tat-tat of the tap gives the song an endlessly catchy edge to juxtapose nicely alongside the screaming teen angst vocals and lyrics. Further proof of the tap dancing greatness can be found in the fantastic single Reckless, which was reason enough for me to buy the album just on the strength of this one, three-minute dose of pure pop genius, with guitarist/backing-vocalist Derek Pressnall taking six simple strummed chords and laying them alongside the layers of chiming keyboard melodies and counter-melodies, which further blur alongside the swathes of sweet vocals and the vague yet evocative lyrics.

Along with the album as a whole, I'd cite Reckless as one of the standout singles of 2006 (sort of... the album was released in 2004 in the US, and is now finally getting a UK release in preparation for a European tour and the obligatory second album!!), with the simple melodies and the surprisingly perky vocals (masking a song that is actually quite a downbeat depiction of the follies of growing up) setting something a benchmark for the rest of the album. Other highlights include the opening track, Fell Down the Stairs, which has a similar integration of the jangly acoustic strum with the lo-fi analogue keyboards, and the lyrics that seem to yearn for the innocence of adolescence, as viewed through the lost and cynical eyes of a group rapidly approaching their mid-twenties (I can relate!!)... whilst the song Bessa strips away some of the keyboards and the over-reliance on the tap to create something that is closer to the "twee" school of acoustic indie-pop, recalling bands like Camera Obscura, and so on.

The album holds together exceedingly well, stickingly closely to the template established by Fell Down the Stairs and Reckless, though occasionally deviating slightly with the aforementioned Bessa, as well as Let it Rain, which has a mellow alt-country flavour replete with cello bass lines and a tinkling piano, whilst A Perfect Fit has a more electro-pop sound, which is reminiscent of the songs from Oberst's Digital Ash in the Digital Urn album from 2005... only better!! The final song is really two songs linked by a long piece of studio atmos (or should that be living room atmos??, since the album was recorded in Stephen Pedersen's house by Pedersen and Oberst), which is a little bit of a stretch (two, three minute songs, linked by about eight minutes of muffled conversation and disparate instrumental clanging), so it might be best to just listen to the first half of the song proper, before hitting the skip button to take you to the end.

Wild Like Children is a fine little debut album from an interesting band who will certainly be on my list of acts to look out for over the coming year. Tilly and the Wall make bright, sparkly, toe-tapping pop for the cynics amongst us... writing songs about wanting to be seventeen again and loosing yourself in the nostalgic allure of late night drinking sessions, hanging out, falling in love, and generally not having a (serious) care in the world. So, a highlight of 2006 from 2004, then? Well, I'd say so.

why has noone being ranting praise over this album yet?!
rarely inspired to write reviews, i saw that noone had said anything on the fantastic Tilly and the Wall and felt the need to re-right the balance of the universe. I bought this album off the back of a playlist by Michael Stipe of REM who had put Night Of The Living Dead on his top 10. That was two months ago and I pretty muc hhavent stopped playing this, I dont need to trouble myself with skipping the bad songs because there arent any, and I dont need to think about what mood im in and reflect it accordingly with my choice of music on my ipod because this album is just as perfect for when your getting ready to go out and when you wake up in the morning feeling like you have been unsed to unclog the blender.
Mainly female vocals, Tilly and The Wall includes a tap dancer who tapdances to the rhythms of the songs. Its amazing. If you arent sure, then the songs to (legally!) download to check it out are:
You and I Misbehaving - the night before
I Always Knew - the morning after
But like I say, from beginning to end its really really painfully good. Its a mystery to me that every man and his dog owns Death Cab and Modest Mouse and noone knows about Tilly. Buy it if you like Rilo Kiley, Sleepy Jackson, or the more upbeat of Saddle Creek artists. For that matter, just buy it anyway, if you hate it you can always give it to one of your musically superior friends.