The Wildhearts were never backwards in coming forwards, and their latest album - arguably their most cohesive and complete yet – is, according to the band’s only real mainstay, Ginger, a journey through the troughs of pessimism and self-doubt to the sunny uplands of hope and optimism. That’s paraphrasing, but you get the picture: he’s looking up, not down.
It might be a new Wildhearts – and they’re up there with The Fall when it comes to the number of members who’ve been through the door – but the vibrancy that made ’93 debut Earth Vs The Wildhearts such a welcome surprise or 2019’s Renaissance Men a latter-day delight remains: unrelenting bombast, pop notes, visceral rage. Although, as Ginger says, he’s been on a journey, and this record ultimately skews towards the positive. Case in point: lead single Failure Is The Mother Of Success ends with the mellifluous refrain: ‘You took a lot of knocks to get where you are today’, and you know he’s talking as much to himself as he is to his audience. Self-affirmation and reaffirmation, this isn’t a solitary journey he’s taking; everyone’s welcome, nay encouraged, to come along on the ride.
That said, The Wildhearts aren’t all introspection and meaning. Kunce is a delightful, thrashing middle finger to ‘superior cyclists’, and people who say ‘hollibobs’ or ‘leave their bags on seats’. It’s a glorious ode to the litany of wankers we all have to deal with every day and a reminder that life isn’t always the big overarching questions, sometimes it’s just that dick on the train.
It’s not a standalone, though, this album is stuffed full of songs. The fizzing Troubadour Moon reads like a country lyric in a hard rock song, painting a vivid picture of the failed muso living in a bedsit, early ambition now realised as hours on the nightshift, dreaming of the arenas never played. The raging Eventually and the quite brilliant Scared Of Glass come at you like attack dogs, but have introspection at their core and sound like Ginger’s pop outfit Hey! Hello! with a hammer in each hand. Then there’s the stark Hurt People Hurt People, a slow-building loop set around the old adage: get knocked down three times, get up four; another left turn that feels right. The devil really does have all the best tunes.
