Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/04/09
Label: Mercury

Even as the first angular, punky releases from the Noisettes' 2007 debut, "What Time Is It Mr. Wolf?", were earning the London trio underground approval and a place in the same feisty female fronted indie bracket as The Gossip, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and New Young Pony Club, there were hints that such quick categorisation wasn't playing well with them. No sooner had they started working on this follow-up than guitarist Dan Smith was warning that the new album would shock anyone who'd written them off as "a garage rock buzz band." On the strength of the first two singles alone, it's clear he wasn't joking.

Certainly, the title track's emergence as a sunny and sweet rock'n'roll shimmy, albeit one with plenty of noisy guitar come the chorus, paved the way for a far bigger, more mainstream Noisettes. A notion which the second single picked up and ran with. The unavoidable, "Don't Upset The Rhythm (Go Baby Go)", a slick and shiny slice of disco fuelled indie-dance, complete with synths, Blondie-esque bass, pulse racing triangle and a chorus worthy of its top 5 chart status, was a grade A crossover hit.

The dismantling of their old lo-fi, niche image and building of their new global potential continues with the rest of the album. "Sometimes", with its hazy Corinne Bailey Rae-isms, is an unexpected yet lovely coffee shop playlist contender. The broken hearted reflection of "24 Hours", a melody as retro as singer Shingai Shoniwa's bouffant hairdo and vintage vinyl voice, comes with all the swimming production of a Smashing Pumpkins record. "Beat Of My Heart" struts to a polished version of their debut's spiky groove, but next to the mournful introspection of "Atticus" and Winehouse/Ronson skip of "Never Forget You", the chances of mistaking these Noisettes for a garage rock buzz band are non-existent.

With a few '50s throwbacks and Shoniwa's ever strident and refreshing unfashionable vocals as the only common threads, "Wild Young Hearts" is a fantastically ambitious album that isn't always easy to make sense of. In their determination to avoid classification, they've created a hard to pin down, indie-doo-wop-wall-of-sound-garage-electro-soul-punk-pop colossus with a tendency to create chaos and confusion with its sudden changes of direction.

Yet while the chances of loving equally "Every Now And Then"'s grandiose '90s strings and the twitchy neon synths of "Saturday Night" are slim, there's no denying that every song is perfect in its own very individual way. If not quit the cohesive, brilliant whole it should be, "Wild Young Hearts" is an impressive sum of beautifully executed parts.

    by Dan Gennoe