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Wolfmother & Heartless Bastards @ MHOW - pics & setlist

words & photos by Benjamin Lozovsky

Wolfmother

When a musical act does what it does well, it can be hard to ignore. Their music might not be wildly innovative or emotionally challenging or rhetorically complex; but a pretty picture is still a pretty picture, no matter how much one may try to elicit some bogus existential commentary from its depths. Wolfmother might be one the quintessential examples of such an approach in today’s rock landscape; you know exactly what to expect, and yet you still end up surprised and exhilarated when a head-on experience with the band is through.

Such was the attractive canvas on view Monday night (11/9) at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, where the band played its second of two New York City gigs as part of its 2009 North American tour with The Heartless Bastards (the first was at the much larger Terminal 5 in Manhattan). With as much subtly as a Jeff Koons masterpiece, Wolfmother ripped through a nearly two-hour set of cleverly interpreted 70’s arena rock pastiche, replete with all the genre-characterizing theatrics one would come to expect from a band categorically set on suckling from the same breast as their prototypical influences.

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The milk of rock-god showmanship was in abundance that evening; there was wild spinning, proper posing, crowd free diving with instruments in hand, keyboard-humping, amp-facing feedback turns with legs cocked at a flying V rigidity; none of that felt cursory though, more like a lighthearted appeal to a rabid audience ready to point their devil fingers to the man.

Nor did it overshadow the musical prowess of the players. Despite a slightly off-kilter start that found group leader Andrew Stockdale out-of-sync with the rest of his bandmates at certain moments, Wolfmother roared out of the woods with a propulsive rendition of the opener on their self-titled debut album, Dimension. Despite a whole new lineup surrounding guitarist and singer Stockdale, the band’s older material was just as glorious and visceral as it once had been, a long three years ago. Songs like Woman and Colossal had the same girth and impressively doubled guitar and bass melody lines, a staple of the group’s sound, as on the record.

Songs from Wolfmother’s new album Cosmic Egg, were received equally well by an audience well familiar with the band’s material. When Stockdale and Co. launched into California Queen three songs into their set, the hypnotically repetitive hyper-speed groove and requisite monstrous breakdown stirred up an all-ages mosh pit that never quite subsided throughout the night. Fans were eager to show their affection for the group, as small tokens of appreciation such as a jacket, sweaty black t-shirt, and a lost watch all made their way to the stage and into the hands of Stockdale. The band, or at least the venue security, were feeling equally as generous, as they threw crowd surfers and rowdy fans who made it on stage back into the audience, sometimes depositing them lovingly head-first onto the floor.

But the true gift to the crowd was the pummeling show Wolfmother stanchly performed. While they don’t necessarily bowl you over with complete virtuosity, Wolfmother managed to knock everyone down with an unwavering tenacity that didn’t let up until the last note of their finale, Joker and the Thief, was complete. New bassist/keyboardist Ian Peres was an unexpected talent however, being kept busy the whole night with managing some of the more intricate textures of the band’s material. Bending down for nimble-fingered bass licks and leaping atop his Rhodes electric piano for arpeggiated keyboard solos, he exemplified the band’s predilection for entertainment-driven, flair-heavy throwback performance.
In an era where genre-leaping and stylistic ambiguity is the norm, it was refreshing to see a band that was happy to lay down a shameless statement of where they’ve come from and where they are likely to stay. Even if it sticks to the pack, this is one wolf that can howl.

More pictures from the night, and the setlist, below…

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