Hop into my fancy space-time continuum zapper and zip ahead into unexplored regions where music and fashion meet: a magical aesthetic land through which we coquettishly zig and zag about the closets of UI’s fave new interviewees to examine the physical and psychological baggage they pack their shizzle in.
Today, we’re prowling around Wolfmother’s den to figure out where his wild things are.
An unabashedly old-school hard rock band from Sydney, Australia, Wolfmother–while not being particularly prolific (probably due in part to infighting) compared to their album-a-year musical cohorts–when the band does manage to release an album, it doesn’t disappoint. If “libidinous howl[s],” a “cranium-cracking bassline” and “sex-drenched vocals” are your thing, that is. And if they aren’t, maybe it’s time to switch to Lite Rock á la Sting anyway.
After splitting up and reconfiguring, Andrew Stockdale and new Co. are charging head-(or in their case, hair-) first with Egg–an album set to be released on October 26 that manages to evoke “Ozzy-with-his-balls-in-a-vice,” with “funky, Hendrix-y guitar.” And of course they crank out something “for the ladies…[a] ballad…an acoustic guitar [that] plays subdued harmonies.” Aw, thanks guys!
Wolfmother (who claim influences as disparate as Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Kyuss and Daft Punk) clearly value style as much as they do substance. Stockdale embodies Wolfmother’s musical mission with his Jimi Hendrix-cum-Kurt Cobain-cum-starving Calvin Klein model genetically freaky-deaky sizzling looks and his always-angsty gaze toward a seemingly ambiguous horizon that only he is deep and/or snazzy enough to see.
Deep thoughts, dreams of dark deeds, siren-drenched guitar lashes, screaming vocal crises…one would expect Wolfmother to have little time for the afore-alluded-to soft rock much derided by our fabulously talented (if somewhat tiresomely pedantic) generation of musicians who would never ever cop to listening to granny’s greatest hits.
But if Stockdale is comfortable enough to rock a ’do that could send weaker souls straight to the analyst’s couch (or at the very least, the oily arms of Frizz-Ease), he’s comfortable enough to cop to listening to (and liking) such golden oldies as “Dreamweaver.” His can’t be missed endorsement of “Gloria” below.
