Wolf & Cub’s debut album Vessels is, above all, intriguing. I’ve never been much of a Pink Floyd fan or had any great devotion to the Zep, but W&C show that these groundbreaking 70’s mega bands are just as influential and omnipresent in modern music as are obscure 80’s underground bands. W&C’s 70’s-tinged psychedelia leaps around the decades’ various sounds from Beefheart (“This Mess”), Floyd (“Hammond”), and Led Zeppelin (“Vessels”), suffusing their songs with a trippy, atmospheric sound that beats harder than shoe gazers My Bloody Valentine and Kitchens of Distinction, yet maintains their noisy sonic soundscape. W&C are anything but another 70’s backlash from the land down under. Six minute instrumentals sit alongside three minute foot stompers on this diverse and percussive debut. At turns solemn and reposed (“Conumdrum”) and then face melting (“Steal Their Gold”), Vessels is quite bold, fresh and assertive.
~ Wes Barker
Buy Album from CD Universe
