I got some good work done on my
latest book last night and my brain is swimming with the story I’ve got packed
away in my head. Before I do some more of that unpacking, here’s a music review
to grease the creative wheels.
Disc 826 is….Self-Titled
Artist: Wolfmother
Year of Release: 2006
What’s up with the Cover? I usually love Frank Frazetta’s art,
but this is not my favourite sample of his work. I am guessing this is some
sort of serpent woman or medusa. She has a pet iguana and a few pet snakes,
including a giant one around her feet. She also has an obvious penchant for
standing majestically on mountains, which I guess is fine if that’s your thing.
How I Came To Know It: Three or four of my friends
bought this album and raved about it, so I decided to give it a chance despite
not liking the single I had heard.
How It Stacks Up: Wolfmother now has three studio albums, but I
only have this one so I can’t really stack it up.
Ratings: 3 stars but just barely
This Wolfmother album often reminds me of first Batman
movie starring Michael Keaton.
“Batman” came out in 1989 to a lot of fanfare and
anticipation. At the time I was working a summer labour job in the small B.C.
town so I could afford another term of university in the fall. There wasn’t
much to do outside of work and “Batman” was a damned exciting event at the only
theatre in the town. So when I went I was pretty let down with a movie that was
just OK. Not revolutionary and not inspiring to the soul, but just an OK action
adventure movie.
Wolfmother never hit with the same fanfare as Tim
Burton’s “Batman”, but it did have a top ten hit (“Woman”) which was OK. It also definitely inspired a bunch of my
buddies who share my passion for music. They loved this record, and knowing
them like I did I thought it would be a sure thing for me as well.
Like Batman, anticipation was everything. I was
expecting Wolfmother to blow me away, and the distance between expectation and
reality left me feeling more disaffected than was warranted.
“Wolfmother”
is actually a solid rock album, and it has benefited from the distance of having
lived relatively unmolested in my collection over most of the past ten years.
This record has superior production and some serious rock crunch. These guys
thump hard, and the rock riffs have a thick seventies fuzz that soaks down into
your bones in all the right ways.
The band is grounded in seventies hard rock, and the
influence of bands like Cream, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin are clear. This is
guitar driven proto-metal and screeching vocals of a man clearly wearing leather
pants two sizes too small. When they are hitting on all cylinders it climbs up
high enough on that mountain to at least be nudging at the feet of their idols.
“White Unicorn”
and “Colossal” in particular are
thick pounding rock songs that never let you up for air, but make drowning
beautiful. Both songs have simple riffs pounding away with just the right
amount of softness and empty space around the edges to make you appreciate just
how majestic it all is.
Lyrically, this record doesn’t have a lot to say
beyond variations of “let there be rock!” “Woman”
is particularly hilarious:
“Woman
You know that you’re a woman
You got to be a woman
I got the feeling of love.”
Apparently a song about a woman, or so the singer fervently
hopes is the case. Even one of my favourite tracks – “Colossal” – has some laughers:
“Such glowing mountains before us
Pillars of life all fade away
Of all the things I need to say
girl
All of these words are in my way.”
I agree that these words are in the way. I would recommend
different words to solve the problem. Fortunately, “Colossal” is so grandiose and over the top bad lyrics actually make
it better.
Wolfmother reminded me of a cross between early
White Stripes and late Led Zeppelin, but for the most part they are a paler
shade of both bands leaving me wanting to hear the originals. I wanted more
songs like “White Unicorn” and “Colossal” but instead there are a lot of
tracks that are just OK; brilliantly played, but not sufficiently different to provide
the shade and colour the record needs on repeat listens.
It is clear that Wolfmother want to create a modern
twist on a seventies rock masterpiece. Those old classics tend to be eight
songs and 35 minutes long. By contrast, “Wolfmother” is 13 songs and 54
minutes. It isn’t over the 14 song limit I usually impose on a record, but for
what they are doing it is still too long. If they cut just 3-4 songs and 15-20
minutes of length the whole experience would have worked a lot better.
“Wolfmother”
is a solid rock record, with musicians that play well together and know their
craft. If you go into it with these modest expectations you’ll like what you
hear.
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