Six months ago, I had no idea who Wings of Desire were. I was familiar with Wim Wenders’ 1987 film of the same title, but that was it. And then a single called “A Gun In Every Home” entered my orbit and I was hooked instantaneously. The band is made up of spouses Chloé Little and James Taylor, and the two are legitimately brilliant composers and singers. They were inspired by Wenders, and the single art for “001” and “Runnin’” features Little and Taylor dressed as angels in homage. Life Is Infinite, the duo’s full-length debut, has been on a rollout since September 2022, when lead single “Choose a Life” was released. Since then, 10 of the album’s 13 songs have been released in some capacity. It’s one of the most ambitious promo cycles I’ve seen, but its arrival in full this week still feels achingly fresh and exciting.
It becomes clear early on that Life Is Infinite is all-in on noise. Wings of Desire are here to fill every inch of your listening capacity with some kind of beautiful, thrilling tone, be it a guitar chord bludgeoning the atmosphere or spastic percussive fills or, most especially, the wall-to-wall synthesizers that populate almost every speck of this record. The London duo understand their own alchemy and wield it greatly. For every moment Taylor wades further out on his own and raises the decibel levels, Little is there to reel him back in with angelic harmonies. The sonics never teeter on messy or chaotic, it takes massive chemistry to make rock music this sensational.
The work of Life Is Infinite floors me, largely because it’s such an affirming collection of cathartic, bombastic, pop-rock-inspired post-punk. Little and Taylor are as interested in channeling Coldplay as much as they are Bruce Springsteen and Bauhaus. On “Be Here Now,” Taylor especially leans into his English accent and sputters out a language that sounds an awful lot like something you might hear a punk profess to a sea of unruly moshers. Wings of Desire choose to be anthemic rather than melodramatic, and that’s what makes the record feel so timeless right off the bat. I’m finding myself spinning these tracks in my car, in my bed, in my living room, on walks. There’s an elasticity there; the melodies are malleable and intoxicating.
“A Gun In Every Home” is the first big swing on the album. It’s the epitome of a canticle, as Taylor embodies the lifeblood of catchiness in every note he sings. It’s exactly what I imagine U2 would sound like in 2023 if they could just remember how to write a good record—or if they wrote Interpol songs. I have to tip my cap to Wings Of Desire here, as this was my entry point into their catalog this year and I was not familiar with their game. But we’re here together now and, as Taylor cries out “Beautiful angel, I’ll pull you out the rubble in the city when it’s tumbling down. You got your reasons and they’ll never love you. Baby, can’t you see how they build you up to pull you down,” the rushing, rhapsodic guitars punctuate the song’s electro-rock nostalgia and tumble into “Better Late Than Never,” a mad, ferocious epic packed with at-capacity histrionics. “We’re just getting older! I’m just getting older!” Taylor pronounces. The melody is contagious, forging fragments of hypnotic, new wave-influenced cosmic-rock big enough to fill every inch of a stadium. Little and Taylor have, slowly, sketched out an entire world with all of these tracks, and “Better Late Than Never” is punctuated by its propensity for letting go.
The album mellows out on “Perfect World,” a truly brilliant centerpiece ballad for Wings of Desire. Here, Taylor’s lead vocal is counterbalanced with Little’s, and the duo soar through a singalong with each other. “I know it ain’t no perfect world, but I will stand by her,” Taylor sings, as Little imbues small touches of harmony around him. “When life falls apart, oh, Heaven ain’t too far in a perfect world.” When the couple get to the “Keep running around, around, around, around” finale, the arrangement drifts off into a minute-long coda of augmented, atmospheric instrumentation shepherded by a massively sweet guitar solo.
There’s a chanting battlecry in “001 (Tame The War, Feed The Fire),” a spiritual club bliss on “A Million Other Suns.” What’s so consistently obvious about Life Is Infinite is that, like the title suggests, the work on this record and the shapes it takes are of the same never-ending potential. The songs maintain a continuity, but each glow in the warmth of uniqueness. Subtle movements, like a synth cue, piano turn or reverb pickup, enter in and leave just as immediately, but each instance provokes the momentum and springs it forward. Little’s moment in the sun comes on penultimate track “Angels,” a shoegaze effort that flirts with ambient. “Cross my heart and carry on, acting like there’s nothing wrong,” she sings. “You watch me jump from such great heights, now here I am all dressed in white.” It melts into closing track “[The Knife],” which is a sublime acoustic joint that punctuates the onslaught of volume with a patient, delicate finale.
Album tempest “Chance of a Lifetime” is a guitar-driven track that sounds exactly what Bruce Springsteen playing post-punk would sound like. And, yet, Wings of Desire make it wholly their own. The harmonies, the instrumentation, the crystalline vibes—they’re all immaculate and turn into an amalgam of cosmic density. “I Will Try My Best” ditches the Boss bravado and adopts a true singer/songwriter confidence, as if Taylor is standing before a small-time club aching his heart away—yet he and Little can’t help but make such a grand entrance and exit, meshing glittering arrangements with a chemistry that is unfathomably aces. I don’t know how to explain it without sounding silly, but Chloé Little and James Taylor have started the best band I’ve discovered in a long time. The work they do is familiar yet volcanically fresh. “We are made of love,” they both cry out over and over near the end of the record. Once Life Is Infinite concludes, it’s clear that Wings of Desire are made up of much, much more.
Matt Mitchell reports as Paste‘s music editor from their home in Columbus, Ohio.
