Artist: Wolfmother
Album: Wolfmother
Label: Modular/Interscope
Tracks: 12
Length: 51:23

An insane ammount of reviews exist for the new Wolfmother cd, and they all say about the same thing. They compare Wolfmother to some rock legends, say they cop the act really well, and if originality is not your thing you should check them out. (Except for those reviewers who put all of their stock into originality. That is where the cd gets really low scores.) Overall I agree with them, though I was a big fan of their EP, “Dimensions.”

The full length, unlike the EP, feels like too much. What is good in short bursts of four songs gets tedious for the full length. The greatest offender is how this full length, although interesting instrumentally, finds Andrew Stockdale’s vocals to get quite redundant and boring. He yowls, trying to shock us into listening, but it comes off insincere and without the passion he is trying so hard to convince everyone he has.

The songs which succeed the most are the ones which have extended periods where Stockdale doesn’t sing. Maybe the band is just grooving, or maybe there is a guitar solo happening, but they are the sections where as a listener I can sonically catch my breath. Which is really frustrating because I can tell the band has talent, it just seems wasted by a lack of vision.

Wolfmother, despite their current media spotlight, is not going to save rock any more than The Strokes or The Hives did. But I am curious to hear future albums from them to see if they managed to capture a vision and avoid falling into parody of the greats of rock n roll... and of themselves.