Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman have spent the majority of their careers resting in the shadows of the people they’ve worked with and projects they’ve collaborated on. This is especially true of their days as members of The Revolution, the backing band that ushered Prince through the most creative and commercially successful period of his career.
Bearing the weight of his high profile, Wendy & Lisa’s work away from The Revolution unfortunately never caught fire in the marketplace despite the appreciation of critics and their fellow musicians. It’s a shame, too, as the work that Wendy & Lisa have done together over the years, starting with a self-titled effort in 1987, has been quite satisfying, filled with bold strokes of chamber pop and lilting psychedelia.
Thankfully for Wendy & Lisa, the years have been kinder to them than they have to their former employer, musically speaking, as evidenced by this, the duo’s first album in a decade. Their approach to songwriting hasn’t altered much, but the work on White Flags feels as mature and fully formed as ever.
It’s an album that is instantly recognizable as a byproduct of the duo’s adopted hometown of Los Angeles, bearing the sun-baked haziness that has marked so many of the best pop records to come out of the city. It’s there in the rambling tempo and sparkling cool of songs like “Red Bike” and “Invisible”, as well as the album’s overall relaxed, yet assured tone.
Mostly, White Flags feels, for lack of a better term, comfortable. The end of the duo’s romantic relationship (a breakup that inspired the album’s most impassioned song, the acoustic ballad “You and I”) has not tarnished their creative partnership one iota. Wendy & Lisa have fallen back into the well-worn grooves that made their work so interesting from the beginning. To hear them settle into the grinding, sexed-up rhythms of “Salt And Cherries” or get lost together in the ethereal vapor of the album’s title track is to hear this duo at their best.
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