Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 24/04/06
Label: Island

We should probably blame AC/DC, but there's always been a meat and potatoes (or, perhaps more accurately, singlet and mullet) aspect to music Down Under: unreconstructed no nonsense heads boogie played by unreconstructed no nonsense heads down blue-collar blokes. From Angus Young to Jimmy Barnes and his immortal Cold Chisel, a steady flow of Aussie and Kiwi rockers have loved nothing more than opening a few cold ones, turning the amps to 11 and letting her rip. If there was a genre description, you'd call this phenomenon Ocker Rock - or rather, in the land that invented abbreviations, Ock Rock (or maybe just 'Ock).

Recently, the 'Ock tradition has been upheld in the shaggy and somewhat sweaty shape of The Datsuns and Jet - bands for whom no cliché is too ludicrous, no guitar pose too statuesque and who seem stuck to AD 1973 like a Mammoth in a tarpit. In a "Nuts" and "Zoo" world, where pheromones replace oxygen, they fit right in - colonial cousins of The Darkness, minus the wit, the tunes and the jumpsuits. On the face of it, one could conceivably add Wolfmother to this list. The Sydney three-piece certainly tick the 'Ock boxes - silly name, big hair, a song called "White Unicorn" and a record sleeve emblazoned with a serpent-tailed goddess.

Happily, Yahoo! Music can report that these warning signs are where the comparisons end, and to judge the Wolfies against their Neanderthal forbears would be doing them a grave disservice. This is both a ridiculously retro and ridiculously stupid album, but somehow it's also a great one. In actuality, the band Wolfmother most resemble are The White Stripes - albeit a Stripes with a bass player, a bigger drum kit and an unhealthy interest in "Dungeons & Dragons".

The yelping scream that precedes opening track "Dimension", certainly reveals vocalist Andrew Stockdale as something of a kissing cousin to Jack White, and the romping "Apple Tree" could easily be a "White Blood Cells" outtake. But Wolfmother are more than capable of writing their own tunes - none more so than on the aforementioned "White Unicorn", which forges its classic axe signature into a Led Zeppelin stomper. Urges to throw a devil sign are difficult to resist. Elsewhere, "Woman" drives hard like Queens Of The Stone Age, "Colossal" does what it says on the tin with a Sabbath-sized riff, while "Mind's Eye" dabbles in prog psychedelia, even if the keyboard solo does summon visions of Rick Wakeman on ice.

Unsurprisingly, you can probably get too much of this stuff - "Witchcraft" and "Love Train" sail a bit too close to Kula Shaker territory - but overall this is rip roaring stuff. A terrific gonzoid metal album. If nothing else, Wolfmother put the R back in 'Ock and this will undoubtedly be the soundtrack to many a summer.

    by Adam Webb