Enjoy: Small Car Big Wheels Album Review

By Danielle Ortega
Local Music Journalist

Artist: Enjoy
Album: Small Car Big Wheels
Release Date: June 29, 2018
Bandcamp: https://enjoy2.bandcamp.com/

Despite Enjoy having released their first album Gold in 2010, I didn’t discover them until Small Car Big Wheels, their most recent album. Enjoy is the solo project of Wyatt Shears, who is also in a band called The Garden with his twin brother Fletcher. Although most of Enjoy’s albums have been much more melodic and slow tempoed than The Garden’s, I would say that this album mirrors a bit more of their eccentric and fast paced style.

Track three “Small Car Big Wheels” is possibly my favorite song on the album. It is incredibly unique with its addition of instrumental sounds, as though it could be the background music for a video game, making me nostalgic for sitting on the floor playing my Nintendo 64. Many of the tracks on this album give me visions of some of the television shows of the ’90s like the very bold and vibrantly colored show ZOOM. I’ve found that this album elicits many fond memories that I had not thought about for a while, making the album very enjoyable and even visceral.

Small Car Big Wheels moves between funky upbeat tracks such as “Small Journies,” “Productivity Has It Been This Long,” and “Dealing With The Unexpected,” and the through to tracks with a softer dream pop sound like “You Mean A Lot” and “D.I.M.” I feel that often albums these days have a similar flow throughout the entirety of the album, making it only fitting for certain moods or occasions. This album is very different in that each track holds its own, striking me as something that would be very difficult to become bored with.

Everything about Wyatt, from the way that he dresses and styles his hair to the cartoony and vibrant animation on the cover, bleeds into this album giving it a very authentic feel; the album has clearly received a lot of TLC and it absolutely shows. This album does not serve as music alone, but rather as an art piece in and of itself. Any listener who has the pleasure of experiencing this album will be given a wistful longing for their childhood as well as an enjoyable soundtrack that will add color to their everyday life.