Alt-J’s (Δ) Album “An Awesome Wave” Analysis

First off, who the heck is Alt-J?

Alt-J or Δ (“triangle”) is an English indie/rock band that was formed at University of Leeds in 2007. When asked “why Alt-J?” the band’s response was “Alt-J comes from the key sequence used to generate the symbol Δ on an Apple Mac computer: Alt + J”. In their sophomore year of studies, Newman shared his original songs with Sainsbury, sparking a collaboration that led to recording sessions using GarageBand in their dorm rooms. Sainsbury took on the role of producer during these sessions. The constraints of living in student housing, where noise had to be minimized, shaped the band’s sound, leading them to no bass guitars and bass drums in their recordings.

A complex radar image depicting the Ganges River delta in Bangladesh and India was generated using multiple layers. Each layer of the image was captured by the European Space Agency’s Envisat Earth-observing satellite on different dates: January 20th, February 24th, and March 31st, 2009.

Okay so what is their album “An Awesome Wave” all about?

The album “An Awesome Wave” was Alt-J’s debut album. “An Awesome Wave” made its debut on the UK Albums Chart at number nineteen, with initial sales of 6,720 copies. An Awesome Wave is the result of five years’ worth of songwriting and creativity. Andy Baber of musicOMH praised the band’s ability to mix different musical styles and instruments on the album without coming off as forced or over-complicated.

^Give the song a listen and come back for the analysis!

A Breakdown of the Best Single in the Album

Breezeblocks (track 4) is currently the most streamed song in the album. This song’s simple 4/4 time signature (bass and snare traditionally only hit on beats 1 and 3) with no time changes keeps the song familiar all throughout. The song starts with vocals, guitar, simple drum set (high-hat, snare, bass), and a glockenspiel. As the song progresses we hear the drum set and glockenspiel get increasingly more and more complex, and we learn about a girl that Joe Newman is describing as “morphine, queen of my vaccine”. The vocals mixed with the drum set the is still just on the down beats “leave room” for the up beats for the glockenspiel, maybe as a way that the man in this story made room for his girl. The song hits a climax when Newman say “please don’t go, don’t break my heart”, and the complexity of the song slowly washes away like a wave rushed over the listener told a story and then slowly washed away. Which goes back to the album’s name “An Awesome Wave”. A common theme throughout this whole album is a story with a dramatic build, then a climax, and resolution.