Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	65/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
Clash	8/10
Daily Mail
The Daily Telegraph
Digital Spy
The Guardian
The Independent
The Irish Times
musicOMH
The Observer
Virgin Media

Wanderlust (stylised as ШАNDԐЯLUЅT) is the fifth studio album by English singer and songwriter Sophie Ellis-Bextor, released on 20 January 2014 by EBGB's. The album marks a sharp shift in Sophie's music style, incorporating elements of folk, baroque and orchestral music. It was featured as BBC Radio 2's "Album of the Week" on 18 January 2014.

A double-disc repackaged version was released on 3 November 2014 and included a remix version of the album.

The album's lead single, "Young Blood", was offered as a free download on Ellis-Bextor's official website on 26 March 2013, before being officially released on iTunes on 21 November 2013. The single reached number thirty-four on the UK Singles Chart and number three on the UK Indie Singles Chart. The accompanying music video was directed by Sophie Muller.

On 31 March 2014, "Runaway Daydreamer" was released as the second single from the album. The music video was also directed by Sophie Muller. It peaked at number 29 on the UK Indie Chart.

The album's third single is "Love Is a Camera", which was released on 23 June, with the video being filmed in Florence, Italy on 30 April, by director Sophie Muller. The single was added straight onto the BBC Radio 2's A-list playlist.

"The Deer & the Wolf" was released on 24 August as the fourth and final single lifted from the album. The video was shot in London by up-and-coming director Harry Cauty.

Wanderlust received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 65 based on 12 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews", while aggregating website AnyDecentMusic? reports a score of 6.1 based on fourteen professional reviews. Gareth James of Clash found the album "quite remarkable", and described the songs as "grand and ambitious." Matthew Horton of Virgin Media wrote that Ellis-Bextor "has decided on a change of tack [...] that has brought out the best in her," and called the songs "almost without exception, marvelous." John Paul Lucas of So So Gay found Wanderlust "bold, ambitious and frequently surprising" and wrote that it "feels like an arrival, and potentially the most important album of her career." Robert Copsey of Digital Spy described it as "a brave excursion into something surprisingly off-kilter for a traditionally top 40 popstar," however he felt that its lyrics sound "occasionally sappy and sentimental." Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian noticed "the preponderance of sweeping string-and-piano arrangements" and noted that "what really sells this album is its forays into eastern European-style pathos."

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