BETWEEN FRIENDS - WOW!

'WOW!' sees BETWEEN FRIENDS throw their bedroom-pop roots into a neon blender and come out fizzing. Opening with the glitzy ‘You & Me Time’, it immediately clocks like the Charli xcx of a decade ago, all processed sparkle and postmodern pop artifice. But there’s a chill in the glitter. Where their earlier stuff glowed warm and intimate, here there’s a glassy distance. It's calculated, clever, but just a little bit cold.

Fortunately, ‘American Bitch’ does a better job of feeling like BETWEEN FRIENDS, tactile and punchy, all elbows and eyeliner. There’s a dirt-under-the-nails charisma that cuts through the polish, anchoring the pair’s signature fusion of digital angst and off-kilter romance. ‘XD’ doubles down on the dancefloor instinct - fizzy, fast and built for TikTok - while ‘Soda’ floats by, gone before you’ve finished the can.

That brevity is part of the album’s charm. Most tracks hover around the two-minute mark, making 'WOW!' feel like flipping through a hyperactive mood board: a little gloss here, a little chaos there. ‘Parking lot’ taps the brakes, offering up a sentimental shimmer that hints at heart beneath the glitch. ‘Very nice’, with its anxious pulse and warped textures, sounds like someone trying to dance away their panic. It’s fun, sure, but there’s something fidgety in the DNA.

‘Jam!’ lives up to its name, a bleepy, bloopy oddity that lands somewhere between a ringtone and a rave. It doesn’t exactly go anywhere, but in a project that treats attention spans like expired milk, that is likely the point.

Co-produced by Max Martin (yes, really), with credits from EDEN, DJ Suzy and Luka Kloser, 'WOW!' is polished to a high-gloss sheen. But underneath all that production muscle, the Hudson siblings still sound like the kids who never quite left their MySpace phase - self-aware, nostalgic and, occasionally, just a little bit brilliant.