A Wonderful is the stage name used by a dude from Rochester named Tim Wilson.
First off, a note on pronunciation. My friends introduced his music to me as "Ay Wonderful" which makes less sense, phonetically speaking, than how one would pronounce it as the middle part of "What A Wonderful World." Either way, it's been a few years since I saw him play live so I can't remember how he said it. I'm gonna let the music speak for itself (this happens to be one of the worst things a person can say about anything).
A Wonderful, in a live setting, layered twinkly 90's emo guitar lines utilizing a looping station. Sometimes friends would accompany the performance. It was during an A Wonderful set that a friend of mine gave the award of "most indie instrument" to the floor tom played with a maraca. I managed to take in a few A Wonderful sets in my days of basement shows. They were always great. And short.
Tim Wilson's personal, minimalist lyrics combined with auxiliary percussion and knotty looped guitar parts for minute and a half long bursts of brilliance. His voice lands somewhere between Bobby Burg of Love of Everything and Phil Elvrum of Mount Eerie, it's reed-thin and hesitant, which happens to fit perfectly with the intimate, low fidelity recordings.
The A Wonderful record I've connected with the most over the years is the Uncorked Understandings ep. It's just over 11 minutes long, features 8 song/sketches, and lasted the exact amount of time it took to walk from my Freshman year dorm to the cafeteria where they sold chicken finger subs until 10:00pm and back. The second track on the album, "Under Cover(s)" is one of the most perfect songs ever written. I can't really say much more than that.
Also available on the internet is a tour-only ep called Light Hearted Dark Days, which features four more fleshed out songs that make the Elvrum influence more apparent. While all four tracks are of high quality (both the songs themselves and the recordings), "All But Invisible" is a clear standout. Its fuzzy, blown out, and messy for the first minute, until the song suddenly relaxes, a shaky egg is brought to the party, and what quietly unfolds for the remaining two and a half minutes is worth your time.
I don't know what A Wonderful's been up to lately, I'm relatively good acquaintances with a few people who might know, but I'm not prepared for that kind of journalism.
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