Alex Krawczyk put out Wonders Await without much noise. No press cycle promising reinvention. No concept to decode. Just songs that showed up fully formed, dealing with the business of getting through life without always knowing what’s around the corner.
Falling in Love opens things, and you know where you stand right away. The horns add brightness but not celebration. There’s nervous energy here, like stepping into traffic. The song moves lightly enough, but something heavier sits underneath. Krawczyk sings like someone who knows falling isn’t poetic. It’s a physical thing. The sensation is dizzying, destabilizing, and beyond your control. Love here isn’t salvation or disaster. It’s a risk taken with eyes open.
That push and pull shows up everywhere on Wonders Await. The music sounds warm, even inviting, but it won’t let you settle. The Beach Song sketches out an almost cinematic escape, guitars glowing in late-day light, all movement and implication. Still, there’s sadness underneath. These moments matter because they don’t last. Krawczyk never says it outright. She doesn’t need to.
Robbie Roth produced it, and he favours space over piling things on. Acoustic guitars form the backbone, while electric textures, horns, keys, and flute drift in and out without demanding attention. Nothing crowds the vocal. Krawczyk’s voice stays centred, close, and unforced. She carries experience without turning it into a show. The Toronto musicians around her get it. They support without trying to shine.
When the Road Is Uneven feels central to everything here. The rhythm section settles into a steady pulse, less groove than reassurance. Krawczyk sings about faltering, about rebuilding, and about the exhaustion of doing both repeatedly. There’s no promise of arrival. The song merely conveys the notion that progress is essential for survival. The line about letting music renew your stride works because the song actually does that. Music as scaffolding. Temporary but necessary.
The title track comes closest to optimism, though that word doesn’t quite fit. Krawczyk sings about opening her eyes to the day with curiosity instead of certainty, like wonder is something you choose to notice rather than something guaranteed. The arrangement lifts gently, flute and keys creating air without getting too buoyant. The optimism feels earned, and it stays fragile.
The album moves fluidly through memory and place. West Coast drifts like a half-remembered dream, more about release than location. Payphone folds time back on itself, summoning an earlier era without irony. The ache feels sincere, unprotected, almost stubborn in refusing to update its emotions. That suits Krawczyk. She has no interest in suppressing her feelings.
Even the deeper cuts maintain this care. Nothing feels like padding. The sequencing helps. Joy and fatigue sit beside each other without cancelling anything out. Light appears, then recedes. The album keeps moving.
Carry On closes things with a phrase so familiar it could mean nothing. Krawczyk avoids that by singing it without resolution. It sounds less like advice than a quiet instruction she’s still figuring out herself. The song doesn’t build toward some big conclusion. It just ends, leaving you upright, maybe steadied, maybe not.
Wonders Await works because it refuses to make resilience dramatic. Krawczyk doesn’t treat endurance as victory. She treats it as work. Ongoing, sometimes tedious, sometimes beautiful work. In a climate that often rewards urgency and doing too much, this album values paying attention. It listens as much as it speaks.
This isn’t an album trying to convince you of anything. It documents the effort of staying present, of keeping yourself open when shutting down would be easier. That modesty becomes its strength. The songs stick around not because they insist, but because they feel lived in.
Wonders Await is out now via MTS Records.
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