Source: Album Art
Ten long years ago, Wolfmother exploded onto the hard-rock scene with their self-titled debut album. It was a record that won them fans the world over, critical praise, and featured ‘that song from that old Guitar Hero‘ advert. It breathed no small amount of new energy into the ailing rock world, and then shit went south. Bassist Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett quit the band, leaving guitarist/vocalist Andrew Stockdale as the sole founding member.
There’s been somewhat of a ‘revolving door’ into the Wolfmother den ever since. Members have been and gone, and despite a string of albums, nothing has ever reached the heady heights of their stunning debut. Victorious, their fourth studio effort, sees a back to basics approach that may just capture that original chemistry – Stockdale performing most of the instruments himself, and writing the vast majority of the material. But does it shine brightly because of this?
In short – sometimes. Victorious is an album chock full of panache, but it doesn’t always move in the right directions. It kicks in with ‘The Love That You Give’, a rampantly paced stormer, full of jabbing riffs locked in tight with the keys and punchy bass. It’s a promising start, even if Stockdale’s stacatto vocal line doesn’t really work. ‘Victorious’ lives up to its’ name, good time viber laced with epic drum fills, buzzing riffs that turn on a dime and an infectious groove.
‘Baroness’ is pleasingly dirty, the bass-based ride broken up slightly by the brighter, cleaner choruses. ‘Gypsy Caravan’ takes this sleaze and cranks it way up, with hard drives and towering fuzzed out riffs, it’s pretty much ‘classic Wolfmother’. ‘City Lights’ is a 70’s retro throwback, Thin Lizzy-esque guitar meeting a sense of joyful, old-school simplicity.
But with all this good comes some unfortunately-bad.‘Pretty Peggy’ is frankly horrible – an acoustic led track evoking shades of old favourite ‘Vagabond’, but ruining it with a saccharine, almost indie series of ‘woah-ohs’ and choruses. ‘The Simple Life’ lacks all true identity compared to the other tracks here, coming off as filler in its truest sense. ‘Best Of A Bad Situation’ is gratingly upbeat, making the band sound like a hard-rock R.E.M, with terribly layered vocals, and claps and a faux-prog ‘freak out’.
If you really dug Wolfmother’s decade-old debut, like we did, there are glimpses of that same band here – Stockdale still wails along with the best of them, the riffs still get satisfyingly wild and crunchy, and there’s the old-school groove we’ve come to know and love. But there’s still an essential chemistry that seems to be lacking. At times it’s like the group try too hard to pretend to write a Wolfmother song. Tracks like ‘Pretty Peggy’ certainly don’t help. While Victorious doesn’t fully earn the name, it’s cold comfort that although things could have gone a whole lot worse, they could have gone a whole lot better too.
