Wolfmother

Wolfmother are kind of super fucking important in my growth into the music fiend I am today.

When I was 23 or 24 years old, I was considering quitting my full time job and in its place becoming a full time gigging musician. I was filled with bar chords and pentatonics and all the potential potential in the world, there was just one thing. Being a musician was fucking impossible.

My dream since I was a kid was playing sold out rock shows the world over, with screaming fans, big hair, leather vests, panties falling from the skies, whipping out the hot face during solos, windmill chord strikes, smoke, lasers, drum kits the size of a luxury SUV...

My dreams weren't my dreams unless they were fucking huge. 

After dropping out of college and moving to LA to chase my dream, I went broke and returned home to attend a university in the middle of nowhere. Spending the remainder of college getting beaten back into "just graduate and get a fucking job" submission, I kept the dream alive by gigging with bands that had no name or motivation other than making noise. Then after I graduated I found myself in a situation where a band I had started was gaining some traction in and around Chicago. Fast forward a year or so, it's August 2006 and we're playing fucking Lollapalooza. 

The Lolla roster in 2006 was fucking balls: Kanye, Gnarls Barkley, The Raconteurs, RHCP, Flaming Lips, Common, 30 Seconds to Mars, just to name a few. But the one band that we somehow found ourselves backstage for, was fucking Wolfmother.

HOLY AUSTRALIAN ROCK BALLS DECKED OUT IN WELL WORN LEATHER PANTS AND SILKY SMOOTH CONDITIONED WHITE GUY AFROS, LUSCIOUSLY CURLY CHEST HAIR, DIRTY COWBOY BOOTS, AND DANGLING CHAINED WALLETS, WOLFMOTHER CHANGED MY FUCKING LIFE THAT DAY.

Hitting all the well known jams from their self titled debut album, these skinny assholes fucking slayed. Their guitar techs were sweating more than they were, as every rock and roll cliche was personified a thousand times in that 45 minute set. From guitar humping the stacks of amps behind them, which created a feedback I couldn't replicate if you paid me, to dragging the pick down the fretboard and punching the strings like it was late for fucking beauty school, I had never seen such beautiful abuse. 

At one point the bass/keyboard player was intentionally kicking his keyboard/stand over so the stagehand had to rush out to right the knocked over instrument. The second that keyboard was upright, he'd turn around and comic book crimefighter kick that sumbitch over again. This went on almost the entire set. 

In addition to fucking with the tech, the bass/keyboard player was hitting chords on the keys that made the keys look rock and roll as fuck. Scrunching his face and power fisting one side of the keyboard so the other side shot up into the air on one set of legs, then rocking the whole thing forward and then flat onto its feet in tandem with a huge strike of a chord on the guitar from the guy next to him.

I was forever changed by Wolfmother. That self titled album paired with that performance earned them a permanent spot on my phone in the playlist titled *ALWAYS*, and it's been that way since I've had a phone with fucking music on it. Matter of fucking fact, the first phone I owned that allowed me to make my own ringtones featured the introductory scream of "Dimension" as my ringtone, which I fucking loved, but my coworkers at the time thought sadistic. 

So then there was a second album a few years later and then a third album few more years after that, but I never really felt anything after the self titled album that tickled my pickle. I was also having a shitload of kids when the second album dropped, so my radar was all diapers and burp rags instead of them Wolfmother riffs bro.

Fast forward to 2016 and I'm doing my normal routine of skimming and deleting emails from bands and PR firms; listening to some, deleting others without listening because they were either neo-soul or they called themselves rap "artists", and WOLFMOTHER shows up in a subject heading. That shit was capitalized as fuck. 

I won't lie and say the first single "Victorious" wasn't exactly what I needed. It was. Holy fucking Wolfmother. Between the riffs that hooked me on them over a decade ago, to the vocals that set them apart from any other band attempting a solid fucking retro guitar riff-finger bang since, this feels like the old Wolfmother without sounding like they're settling for it. 

This new album isn't just full of fucking huge ass fucking riff balls, it's traipsing into territory I'd expect from The Kooks or Catfish and the Bottlemen, but not the old Wolfmother. It's almost like these assholes matured, and rather than tossing out what attracted all of us to them, they're holding that shit on their back like a bunch of rock and roll Paul Bunyans, but they're playing just the tip in all these different moist holes. And with a Bunyan dong as presumably huge and girthy as one might assume, these holes are gettin' fuckin' WRECKED. 

And if there was a warning light on my dashboard that tells me my steering wheel is going to file for divorce because I've been beating the shit out of it too hard, it would be a blazin' bro. IT TWOULD BE ABLAZIN BRO. 

The thuggy aromatic thump of the bass on tracks like "City Lights" and "Gypsy Caravan" is pleasantly ass massaging, and perfect for fresh out the shower mirror air guitar-ing. The melodramatic synths sprinkled all over Victorious (especially on "Baroness") are something I never really realized fit so well in the Wolfmother sound because I was too quick to tune up my aforementioned air guitar, but while the guitar under that shrill vocal is still the focal point, I'm happy to fucking report Wolfmother sounds as full as they ever have.

My favorite song on the album is "Best of a Bad Situation", and it's the least Wolfmother song I've heard from Wolfmother, ever. This is fucking Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" getting injected with a hefty dose of anthem rock and it's glorious. This song is a specifically perfect example of where Wolfmother is in 2016. They're unafraid of riffing the fucking balls out of your body through your agape mouth hole, but when a fucking awesome song presents itself, they murder the shit the same as every other riff-based shits they been shitting over the last decade or more.

It sounds dumb to say, but I'm fucking proud of how fucking cohesively badass this album sounds. Putting this record on alone and jamming the fuck out while folding six loads of laundry is just as easy as putting the shit on and drinking with friends, and that's not an easy task no matter the personal history I have with a band.

Victorious fucking murders. Wolfmother fucking murders Victorious.