Except Wonderland, produced variously by Steve Power and a returning Hugh Padgham (who in no way resembles his overdriven 80s/early 90s self), is still one of my favourite albums 16 years on, and I have no real need to think about this context (these "battles" are part and parcel for pop groups who fancy themselves as 'cool'), just as I never did then. Finally, with this record, their place in a lineage of great, tuneful pop rock was suddenly apparent, if you cared enough to see. Those new ideas of theirs are many, and they see them all eye to eye. Several songs even make genuinely inventive use of a large string orchestra conducted by the pop-familiar Steve Hale. And while Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones were never great singers, their sheer eager-to-please youthfulness constantly sees them through, and gives everything here an extra velocity that might not otherwise exist.
The de facto lead single “I'll Be OK” starts things with ringing Edge arpeggios over a throbbing Who’s Next (the Who were McFly’s then-favourites) organ, before the band snap into focus with a discharged rhythm – an album intro so assured they went about doing something similar next time round. The song proper is a caring reminder to remain hopeful when “everything is going wrong”, offering that helping hand, and sure such uncomplicated advice could come off as deceptive if you weren’t feeling it, but I have felt it, as others have. Platitudes schmatitudes… there is no side to what McFly are doing; like Kim Appleby and even the R.E.M. of “Everybody Hurts” before them, it offers comfort and realises the importance in that, and while it does try to be specific (“when your lover’s gone”, “all the alcohol in the world would never help me to begin”), loosening its universality a tad (while only increasing its grip on those who see themselves in that), there are no cynical U-turns a la the coda of “You Get What You Give”. Even when Tom sings of “your only friends all [having] better things to do” – much more pertinent to me now than when I was a kid – the gap gets bridged. “Everybody Hurts” was written for teenagers, “you’re not alone” it sang, and so this song does the same. The importance this can have, particularly for young people, cannot be underestimated, as a browse of YouTube comments will make clear, while in the context of Wonderland, it's something that was important to establish on the upfront, as McFly will be getting their own nails dirty later on.
As a record, it deploys casual musical smarts, locking back into that jolting introductory roll on cue; the guitars in the chorus are surprisingly pitched closer to BJ Cole than 80s Edinburgh (or the Edge, again, for that matter), while the delayed lines in Tom’s verse plot the music’s spaciousness. It is followed by a cloudless love song (they were ok!) in “I've Got You”, with none other than Graham Gouldman turning up to co-wrote and co-produce. Pop came so easily to Graham once, and it's fair to say that was long before GG06 was a glint in his eye (I wonder if he ever fantasized about a parallel universe where he could stick this on 10cc’s Greatest Hits… and More?), and yet here is effortless, breezy power pop that many before them would have killed for. Part of its modern appeal to some may be because, unlike most guitar pop which survives from the mid-00s on radio, it flaunts its easy appeal without making a song and dance about the superiority of pop (as per Dan Gillespie) or pretending that it is something better than pop (the attitude of, say, Razorlight); these sort of games don’t exist in McFly’s heads, nor those of their audience. So far, you’re promised a hooky-beyond-belief if relatively straightforward pop rock record.
But then the ambitions are raised. “Ultraviolet” is really splendid 1967 worship, its vigorous power pop sound and talk of 'summer girls' rubbing shoulders with sitar drones and a somewhat raga-like second verse. If it reminds me of anything in ‘boy band’ terms, it’s Robbie Williams’ early cod-psych hit “Lazy Days” (meant as high praise!), whose heavy guitar drones are closer to McFly’s than may be initially obvious. The band’s brush with psychedelic pop here is not quite Jellyfish (yet), and nor does it simply study The 1960s, reproduce that and be done with it. Rather, it takes delight playing with its incongruencies, from its non-sequitur lyrics (and we are not made clear who the dart-throwing Mrs Halloween, “drinking at the bar again in New Orleans”, really is) to the aforesaid musical pile-on – note the Cali guitar jangles of the intro have slowed into low, contemplative notes by the end (with the sitar still droning away like a question mark); may these drawn-out outros of Danny’s give themselves more annotation later on.
The other side of the '67 coin is “The Ballad of Paul K”, a charming, classically (but perhaps unintentionally) Keith West-esque exploration of one man’s mid-life crisis that in all honesty is funnier than many of Britpop-era Damon's character studies ("He doesn't like to mention, applying for his pension, so, his children don't know he heading... into a mid-life crisis, he can't afford the prices, for, the new kitchen floor he's buying"). Far from sneering, it was a genuine curiosity of theirs as they were seeing these things for real in their own fathers – Danny has referred to it discussing what parents try, and perhaps fail, to keep from their children when times are falling hard – which makes for a disarming record, even more so given the subject is a natural anomaly among the band’s songs. These two songs appeared together as their own double A-side, where “Paul K” was enhanced with some gentle but involved orchestration that adds further sympathy to the lyrics, as if pasting “She's Leaving Home” atop “When I'm Sixty-Four”; while I wish this version had appeared on the album, attention should be drawn either way towards the song’s gorgeous, unpredictable chords – the music's harmonic commentary emphasises the bumps and helps you wish for that happy ending that doesn’t quite come soon enough.
They’re back to singing about romance, or the want for it, with the symphonic Bo Diddley of “I Wanna Hold You”, which perhaps bears the contemporary influence of Girls Aloud's “Love Machine” (a record that invented its own 21st century skiffle sound) (and note also Will Young’s brilliant “Switch It On”, released several months after Wonderland). Dramatising unrequited love into something that causes a 'pulverizing' of the nation, the spry and unforced humour here may be the closest the album gets to the first one – certainly, this is the giddiest thing on the record, stop/start hiccups etc., and is even comparable to some of the less Steinman-ite of Muse’s orchestral rock dramas (although, “it’s like a neutron bomb explosion tearing me apart”? Come on, Jim would have had a ball with these lyrics!) Of course, for all its showiness, it’s also just three-minutes long – taking 50s rock and roll as a template allows it to burn up as quickly as it warns you it will. And it’s all dipped in exclamation mark strings worthy of Harry Robinson.
Admittedly, a break-up ballad does appear with “Too Close to Comfort”, but note how the guitar chugs that appear only from the second chorus onward are seemingly in tribute to another emotional fog of a pop song, Weezer's “Say It Ain't So”, complete likewise with a 'we wanna soar like our heroes' climax. It’s almost to McFly what “3AM” was to Busted, what with that deceptive cadence at the end, except it isn’t a Nick Cave murder ballad with Psycho strings like their effort – instead it considers matters from both sides of the story (“you must have your reasons”), and Danny’s periodic use of Space Echo helps with plotting the requisite, but never overbearing, bigness.
Another thing with McFly is that the hits which survive in the public memory are usually the ones which shy away from their Who/Jellyfish/Queen/etc. rock geekdom. So it stands with their joint signature song, “All About You”, originally released half a year earlier for Comic Relief. It’s so simple and obvious a love song that it sounds like the first song someone would write, and thus you're surprised wasn't released until 2005. But again, it reminds me of that golden year, and through the coupling of its smitten harmonies with the dynamic folk/baroque pop arrangement, its rather worthy of the greatest 60s toytown or sunshine pop. Furthermore, that its grandiose strings wrap such uncomplicated, all-you-need-is-love themes without panache calls to mind a chamber pop Sarah Records. It isn't short on surprises either; that flowery orchestral prologue could be setting the mic up for a crooner, and when the song could have jumped to its big, loudest moment, it instead weaves us through an interlude of woodwinds and Spanish guitar. Plus, like who knows how many classics (“God Only Knows”, “Birdhouse in Your Soul” etc.), the singers end up singing past and around each other in comfy rounds, Danny adding incomplete choruses to Tom’s complete ones. It’s at this point you’re really putting your arm back around it if you’re not immune to its charms.
But Tom really has spent the whole album building up to what comes next. That one song in him that breaks through to some place new that's perhaps a little scary. Hale’s strings have become bigger the further along we've gone, and with the two-part “She Falls Asleep”, the music becomes wholly panoramic. In fact, the first part is nothing but orchestra – and I suppose it’s remarkable that an album primarily bought by teenagers contains a whole piece of modern classical music (even if this first part is less than two minutes long) and a track without any of the band on it – and is patient but animated in its setting of the locus. John Williams was Tom's influence, and it makes one realise he could write a great Disney score, likewise as we settle into part two, which is pure baroque pop (or is Romanticist pop closer?) Strings, piano, voice. As a song and as an arrangement, I can imagine it in Paul McCartney’s hands.
But it’s also about a lover with heavy depression. This isn’t such an abrupt change of direction, given where the album has already gone, but Tom, just turned 20, is careful to get the balance right in writing what some may have assumed to be beyond his reach. As a lyric it’s a frozen moment, or a few, in time – working through things that have been said, trying to reach her in time to save her, maybe literally if that’s how you want to see it – meaning it neither focuses too much on, nor skirts too much around, its burning undercurrent. Instead there are momentary glimpses into weighty context (“she’s calling about her broken home”) if you want them. The gravelly orchestra keeps changing itself as his, or her, actions or thoughts affect, or correct, the next ones, or the previous ones, with the arrangement working through intensities and we-can-see-for-miles epiphanies. There’s a lot of dynamics at play here. There has to be.
And it's very affecting, the moment in which Tom exceeded himself. Hear how the slow “she’s not got that much more to give”, floating on a prematurely tearful bed, suddenly gets a jolt as “Eleanor Rigby” strings punctuate him now abruptly going over what must be done to help get her through. No defeatism, thanks. “Lying very still on the floor by the door but it’s locked ‘cause she was hoping...“, accuses Tom to himself, before a pause, “you would come back for more!” It's the natural struggling for clarity. But there are two particularly potent moments when she – perhaps literally, perhaps not – calls about having waited and ached too long, bringing back his focus. At first it’s a stagnant coo which is allowed to draw itself out, allowing the rushing refrain of part one to cycle back around with renewed determination (as there is no giving up). On the second instance, at the end, it is belted distantly, and just like that the chords come crashing dizzyingly down. Before, wait, a perfect cadence. That was something “Clover Over Dover” never did. There is precariousness and then there is a final retreat. It is a breakthrough for its writer comparable to “The Rain Came Down on Everything”, “No One Waits” or “Odessa”. It is perfect.
It also means Danny needs his own moment, of course. Opening tentatively with some inscrutable, murky drones of synth and chopped-up noise – like he's testing the air before fully committing to what follows – "Don't Know Why", which oddly resembles Doves' "Caught by the River" but less ornate, was penned by Danny with his sister about their father's destructive attitudes to their family, with – hinted at almost in passing – him ultimately leaving for someone else (as if the innocuousness of "The Ballad of Paul K" wasn't concealing enough harsh truths). Some might pre-emptively sneer, again, about this potentially being an overreach (along the lines of 'didn't Good Charlotte do songs like this?' And so what if they did?) (and also, Good Charlotte's then latest-album, their own 'serious' move, opened with two minutes of orchestral music. You can find links anywhere!), but his emotional intelligence, if that's how you want to put it, sounds both hard won and fearlessly on cue ("I don't want to know your game, let alone her name. No matter what you say to me, we are not the same"). The somewhat eerie middle-eight, in which the faded "dreams we have as kids" are put away at last, seems to be a central pivot as thereafter the song's growing feeling of exultation becomes huge (hear that guitar solo, the catharsis blatant and powerful). He'd sung "I just wish you'd have tried" all along, but by the end it is followed by an ecstatic "yeah!" and the band pull together for a photo finish. They all sound so valiant. This weight has been lifted. There is only forwards to go.
But then, when you think it's all just about over, a few stray, plucked phrases from Danny's acoustic are heard. He is channelling Kelly Joe Phelps, shown to him in his upbringing, so one assumes by his father. Likewise, that offset middle-eight repurposes Isaac Guillory. I think of many guitarists and how the first time they pick one up as a child it can be partly as a way out – out of childhood, or a bad situation – and partly because they've breathed music as an environment. So the track's final moment may be one of private reflection after all that came before it, one tearful final message back to that time and place. Without all that music, those guitarists, would he be here doing this now? And he is, isn't he...
The re-energised, having-exorcised-the-demons McFly move swiftly on from this dual-peak to "Nothing", whose blast of power pop sunshine harks back to the first two tracks with its Blue Ash-sized chorus and another wobble of Riley/Who's Next keyboards in the middle-eight (interestingly, all the record's middle-eights are introduced in the liner notes as 'M8s', which as a kid was how I first came about them being a thing. Similar treatment is not given to any other parts of the songs). And yes, the Who influence works overtime here with the riff being a variation on "Substitute", but what I find really interesting is how the guitar, combined with Harry's skipping fills, put me (perhaps inexplicably) in the mind of skiffle, and not even for the first time with this lot, what with "Hypnotised" from the first album (although that song arguably sounds more like, of all things, the Coral's "Pass It On", itself derived from "You Like Me Too Much"). The lightness of the music here is such that you'd probably not realise they haven't really exorcised those demons at all ("Even words of sympathy mean nothing"), but this little existentialist moment is defeated by, of course, the realisation (to us as listeners at least) that Tom'd do better if he wasn't in this ill-fated relationship. Really, the band are on, or near, the right roads. He'll be ok.
And so finally it all has to come full circle. "Memory Lane" is a reminder (and a particularly useful one to idiots who'd wonder why these young chaps are singing about their memory lane) that teenagers have their own rigidly-defined past and present – certainly for me, so much has sadly changed since 2005 – and that the song was one of the first they ever wrote makes it even more aggregable. It uses lost love as its touchstone but the fact it closes two of their greatest hits compilations, despite never being a single, contextualises what it really means for the band. It does exactly what you want it to, i.e. deliver us a big cosy, self-assured "Hey Jude"/"Hot Love"-style coda/curtains close. "So much has changed" they repeat as enveloping strings pave their path into, or beyond, Wonderland, seeing these changes they speak of play out (Danny gawkily and loveably provides McCartney's Little Richard interjections, "so muuuch yeah yeah!"). The band's instruments eventually fade from the picture behind them, and a marching band snare adds to the feel that this is a procession into the new - for them, and their fans.
And that ultimately was what it was to me. It was the first album I owned that I felt some initial bafflement by – no, I was a bit taken back at first, I think by its relative slowness and tad moody cover (no one's smiling, although Dougie looks like he's struggling not to) – before falling for it quickly, and that initial 'oh???' to decisive 'oh!!!' is surely a rite of passage for pop fans. Wonderland is proudly, endearingly pop and for all who love it (so not just teenage girls. My friends were mostly boys and we were all kids), but ambitious in its own way and yet never exploring ideas above their station (or even entertaining the notion that such off-limit ideas could exist) (and generally, the closer McFly came to outré ideas the better they became; see for instance the 70s art rock worship of 2006's "Transylvania", their best ever song. And compare with the Sparks of 2006 and be amazed). The critics' reception to Wonderland – cautious references to imagined people comparing it to the Raspberries or whoever, rather than being honest upfront – does suggest that if McFly had been some other band, others would have drawn acclaim more confidently. It seems pointless to think on that fantasy, but the McFly of 2005 were much closer to K Records or Teenage Fanclub, in spirit and sound, than anything nominally indie clogging up the British charts at the time. The band themselves went onto discover Jellyfish and a lot of other great things (I'll try not to say too much about Motion in the Ocean in case I ever write about it). And quite a lot about me - the eight-year-old boy who began collecting CD singles of bands I loved and not just the albums, and the slightly older boy who had aspirations to one day try and put a great, overlooked record into some context - began with this album.
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