Heavy Weight

The third album from psych-rock survivors Wolf & Cub boasts newfound dub, dance and pop influences. It sounds great but there’s a nagging emptiness to it, writes AARON CURRAN.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Founded in Adelaide just over a decade ago, Wolf & Cub followed 2006’s well-received Vessels with the intriguing but less satisfying Science & Sorcery LP in 2009. After Joel Byrne (guitar, vocals) and Joel Carey (drums) were joined by bassist Wade Keighran and multi-instrumentalist Brock Fitzgerald (both ex-The Scare), the four-piece self-recorded Heavy Weight last year before enlisting Burke Reid (The Drones, Oh Mercy) to bolster the mix. It’s a job he’s accomplished with much success as the album sounds great, with solid punch and textural definition.

Here, Wolf & Cub have steered into territory mapped out by mixtape-minded musicians like Bobby Gillespie or Josh Homme: underground rock that’s unafraid of pop hooks and dance rhythms, as noddingly familiar with glam and dub as with garage-punk and psych. On one level, that eclectic approach seems to work for Heavy Weight – the results are never less than assured – but there’s a nagging emptiness at the album’s core.

“There’s rarely enough at stake.”

The deadbeat glamour of Heavy Weight’s rock ‘n’ roll swagger is a little too cocky for its own good; it carries itself with the brooding confidence of well-worn influences effectively aped, but there’s rarely enough at stake in either the music or lyrics to feel Wolf & Cub have transcended their inspirations to create something of comparable power.

‘Can’t Remember the Last Time opens with a coarse, thrumming chord that downshifts into a two-note pattern, leaving lots of space for gravelly synth, bass and guitar textures and Byrne’s reverb-fuelled voice: “I never thought you’d walk away but still I’m not surprised/Do you wish it went a different way? Do you wish you tried?” So far, so Vega and Rev, until the three-minute mark, when a drum loop drops hard before melding with layers of guitars and incongruously wistful keyboards to petulant result.

‘Salao’ is all choppy riffs and handclaps, with the kind of catchy gospel-pop chorus and vacuous lyrics that Primal Scream frequently depend on (“Only love, only love makes you feel this way”). The lulling, hypnotic organ lines of the knowingly named ‘Lizard Skin’ resemble The Doors’ ‘Riders on the Storm’, so it pays a timely tribute to the recent passing of keyboardist Ray Manzarek. ‘John Alone’ builds on a foundation of ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’s one-chord piano riff to anthemic effect, with a penetrating guitar break that peels like paint stripper. It’s a standout, as is the ready-for-radio glam stomp of ‘Shut Me Out’.

You’ll have heard the driving single ‘I Need More’ by now; the urgency of Byrne’s vocal sneer (am I the only one to hear Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye in his delivery?) and the rave-tastic, rising keyboard whine almost forgoes the need for a memorable chorus, but not quite. A similar fate befalls ‘All Through the Night’, despite its pleasantly evocative verses. Album closer ‘Got a Feeling’ strives for a menacing atmosphere – all the ingredients are there, but it never hits home.

It’s impossible to miss the key influences on Wolf & Cub’s new record – like The Stooges, Suicide and The Doors – but the music and careers of these influences were marked by confrontation, risk and danger, with performances that came to stand for something more than mere entertainment. You can still hear that delicious tension and instability on, say, Fun House and ‘Frankie Teardrop’. Is it too much to expect to hear it on new LPs like Heavy Weight too?

“Surely new music that simply picks and chooses from pre-existing tropes is overly safe and ultimately insubstantial?”

After all the effort they’ve put into producing and releasing this album independently, Wolf & Cub deserve their shot at global success alongside Australian psych-rock contemporaries like Tame Impala. The band are excellent musicians, they know what they’re trying to do and they accomplish it efficiently. Should that be enough?

The world’s gone and taken a swing to the right. Those who’ll listen to Heavy Weight are faced with the most politically conservative era of their lives. Surely new music that simply picks and chooses from pre-existing tropes of rebellion in rock but leaves out the vinegar, salt and spice of sedition, experimentation and dissent – that seemingly ignores all the blood, damage and mess of these times, let alone their players’ own lives – is overly safe, inherently conservative and ultimately insubstantial?

Or perhaps the absence of those insurgent qualities will be the deciding factor in Heavy Weight’s very success?

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‘Heavy Weight’ is out now independently through MGM. Launch tour dates below. Read Joel Byrne’s Track by Track about the album.

Thurs, Oct 10 – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney, NSW
Sat, Oct 12 – The Zoo, Brisbane, QLD
Thurs, Oct 17 – Republic Bar, Hobart, TAS
Sat, Oct 19 – Ed Castle, Adelaide, SA
Thurs, Oct 24 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC
Fri, Oct 25 – Beach Hotel, Byron Bay, NSW
Sat, Oct 26 – Amplifier Hotel, Perth, WA
Sun, Oct 27 – Newport Hotel, Fremantle, WA