- by Michelle Connolly
- Thursday, November 16, 2006
It sold out way back in July and no wonder, seeing rock’s current best live act Wolfmother are headlining the fifth MTV Spanking New Music Tour. Striking frontman Andrew Stockdale leads the curly-haired trio through a riotous evening down at Brixton, opening with ‘Dimension’. For archetypes of the modern stoner rock genre, Wolfmother look anything but stoned – in fact there’s probably more marijuana being puffed by the largely surfer T-shirt-clad crowd than the gangly rockers on stage. If not dope then what? Try something more stimulating, to match their innate enthusiasm whilst delivering a slick set, recalling pretty much every iconic 1970s hard rock band. Stockdale, dressed in jeans and a grey waistcoat, careers around onstage, his limbs flailing beneath his impressive white man afro, and at the rehearsed time he manages to regain composure to deftly strum his six string against the thundering rhythm section courtesy of bassist stroke keysman Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett.
Wolfmother are wholly unoriginal however. They’re clearly a derivative act, garnering much of their influence from Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin but that isn’t going to detract from the energetic performance tonight. That energy is matched by the crowd, as the pogopit quickly becomes an all-out moshpit sound tracked by ‘Woman’, the band’s debut single – it was double A alongside ‘Mind’s Eye’. At this point the crowd’s fervour was undoubtedly aided by way of Stockdale’s cheeky intro: “This song is about sex - well somebody’s gonna get laid at a Wolfmother gig!” And it’s a good night for the squishy lager cups too, with plenty of those reaching new heights tonight.
Exiting suddenly, without so much as a word, the Sydney lads head backstage for a well-deserved breather, prompting furious encore cries but a few painstaking minutes later they emerge and finish a momentous evening with their latest, and most thumping single ‘Joker & the Thief’. But even ending the set with this just isn’t rock ‘n’ roll enough for this power-rock trio. Yep, they take their guitars and smash them to smithereens – and the drum kit too.
Wolfmother are wholly unoriginal however. They’re clearly a derivative act, garnering much of their influence from Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin but that isn’t going to detract from the energetic performance tonight. That energy is matched by the crowd, as the pogopit quickly becomes an all-out moshpit sound tracked by ‘Woman’, the band’s debut single – it was double A alongside ‘Mind’s Eye’. At this point the crowd’s fervour was undoubtedly aided by way of Stockdale’s cheeky intro: “This song is about sex - well somebody’s gonna get laid at a Wolfmother gig!” And it’s a good night for the squishy lager cups too, with plenty of those reaching new heights tonight.
Their second Australian single ‘White Unicorn’ strikes a clever balance between soulful ballad and rock anthem and the reception from the beer-drenched crowd is fitting of the latter but the quality of this, one of Wolfmother’s signature tracks, is fitting of the encore.
Exiting suddenly, without so much as a word, the Sydney lads head backstage for a well-deserved breather, prompting furious encore cries but a few painstaking minutes later they emerge and finish a momentous evening with their latest, and most thumping single ‘Joker & the Thief’. But even ending the set with this just isn’t rock ‘n’ roll enough for this power-rock trio. Yep, they take their guitars and smash them to smithereens – and the drum kit too.
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