THE WILDHOUSE - Jackson 56 CD Album
I thought that the last thing the Wildhouse could do – after over 6 years of covering the band's activities – would be to surprise me – yet, right from the start of this album, that's exactly what they do – in a good way....
The album opens with the three minute “I Want You To Love Me” and there's not a rhythm in sight – instead, we have the drummer Sheila as lead singer set to to the backdrop of melodic, jangly guitar delicacy, the whole thing sounding like the sort of thing Renate Knaup would have done on one of the early Amon Duu II albums, in between the towering epics that were their trademark – she's got that sort of richly sonorous voice but with an edge, a sense that it's gonna fall off the cliff at any minute – but Sheila and the guitar just flow forward in pastoral Karutrock fashion, then just as you think this is gonna be it, with just under a minute to go, suddenly the voice drops and this rifle-fire barrage of guitars crashes in and sees the track out. “Silver Comet” hammers in on waves of swirling, psychedelic guitars, huge bone-crunching guitar riffs and explosions, searing heat feedback and the harmonious male vocal that adds the air of mystery. As the vocal drops, so the guitars strengthen, dissolve into a maelstrom, swirl, growl and drive, suddenly enter the peace of a benign black hole, only to come out of the other wide with all guns blazing but half the rocketship disappeared.
At three and a half minutes, “St Judas” delivers the driving beats of Sheila's mighty percussive crunch, the shimmering heat of guitars, the howl of guitars set for the heart of the fx pedals, dual male and female vocals that are taut and on edge, as all around the Krautrock explosion of the massive rhythmic undercurrent and that squalling nuclear wind of guitars, roars, resonates, echoes, and even ends on a softer note just to show that this band can do restraint – for all of 30 seconds – before blasting out once more as the guitar tornado and distant vocals tear down everything in their wake.
“Manifesto One” is eleven minutes long – it starts with amorphous fx and deep guitar squalls before this male voice that is decidedly on the edge of sanity, recites a list of names over the nerve-jangling, cosmic squall of guitars, fx and percussion that's constantly changing shape underneath the insanely addictive recitation – it's truly cracked, but it's equally hypnotic in a rabbit-in-the-headlights manner. This goes on for eight and a half minutes, before the final part sees the undulating space gloop take over as unnervingly blissful textures and solid yet delicate, almost heartbeat rhythms, see the track out on a dying solar flare of drifting cosmic energy. “Manifesto Two” is a minute of more jangly guitars, this time all cyclical under an echoed male vocal, that's right out of the early seventies Euro-rock stable from the sorts of bands that Nurse With Wound's Steve Stapleton used to love – and, god knows, if only he could hear Wildhouse, he'd love the little rascals.
“Fearless” is the sound of more guitar squalls set to the more familiar driving rhythms of Wildhouse's space-rock trip only this time it's Sheila's more mid-range vocal that takes the song forward until a hi-reg psychedelic guitar lead takes centre stage and what, amazingly (in the unique musical world that is Wildhouse), approximates to a “traditional guitar break” and then allows the song to return – and you get worried that the band might be going soft coz it sounds remarkably “normal”. Any such fears are dispelled by the mighty “My Life As Pop Art” as we get twelve and a half minutes of vintage Wildhouse – driving drumming that powers along, tons of guitars from melodic twang through hurricane riffs, space-rock squalls and raging infernos of feedback, to red hot leads and fx, mighty undercurrents and cyclical textures. The album then ends with just under two minutes of drug-induced haze as the sound of a vocal at the end of its days is accompanied by what sounds like a steel-stringed mandolin and hissing wind fx on a distant layer of feedback, see things out.
It is one extraordinary album from one extraordinary band and yet another amazing chapter in the ongoing musical story that is the unique and uncompromising Wildhouse.