Worldpeace DMT: Stick Around for Tea Review - 'Laptop TV' duo keep things ridiculous but amp up the songs

(WPDMT) Bringing back the stunning sound design of their acclaimed debut album 2025, the London duo explore childhood with quirky humor and great musicianship. That irreverent album title summed up their approach to their references: Leo Fincham and Rowan Miles - also of Femcel

Bringing back the incredible sound design from their acclaimed debut 2025, the London duo explore childhood with quirky humor and great musicianship.

One of the surprising highlights of last year was The Velvet Underground & Rowan, the debut album from London's astonishingly literate duo Worldpeace DMT. The irreverent album title summed up their approach to their references: Leo Fincham and Rowan Miles - also of the Femcels - referenced Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys with a palette straight out of NME circa 2011.

This year, Worldpeace DMT have changed course, perhaps in response to suggestions that they are at the forefront of an emerging genre called 'laptop twee'. The duo's mix-out Flowers Powers largely eschewed brooding vocals and heavy sampling in favor of live instrumentation that ran the gamut from spiritualized to outlaw country. Stick Around for Tea , their second album, brings a shade of the goofy, Song-Tong-like sound design that made their debut such a joy, while bringing Fincham and Miles' songwriting to the fore.

Stick Around for Tea seems to be a concept album about childhood. Worldpeace DMT's inherent whimsy suits these songs, which draw dry humor from lyrics about spiders, tigers and the human guitars of Fincham and Miles in a self-consciously childish way that belies their sharp musicality: for example, the lush, almost Park van Dyk joy of Munich Giaro, or the mastery of the bulletproof pop structure of the title track. The result is the kind of devastatingly contemporary record that even old classicists probably can't turn their noses up at.