The paradox of the developed world’s so-called progress is that we’re hell bent on making life more difficult and complex. Public infrastructure projects are suffocated at birth under the weight of nebulous feasibility studies, leisure time has become an exploitable commodity and the spell of modern technology has rendered us unable to perform the most basic of tasks without metaphorically fellating some Silicon Valley whizkid.
Midnight Woolf is as simple as modern society is an indulgent Byzantine mess. The riffs have been around longer than Wall Street self-interest, and the lyrical themes as sophisticated as Chuck Berry telling dirty anecdotes in the schoolyard. It’s Love is three chords and an adolescent love-struck proclamation, Can’t Slow Down is unapologetic speed-fuelled rockabilly and Take It Off is the bastard garage rock child of Link Wray and Betty Page. Skin You Alive is spaghetti western rock decked out in stylish Spanish pop style, Let’s Dance offers a surf-and-grease alternative to vacuous romantic rhetoric and I’ll Be Your Dog takes political correctness and pummels it into submission with a Radio Birdman-filled frenetic assault.
On Haircut, Midnight Woolf discover its inner pop band, all smilin’ and lovin’; Natural Man has Brian Jones and Steve Marriot smiling from beyond the grave. Drink Wine discovers viniculture as metaphor for hot love; Fuss And Fight is all apple pie and distorted American morality. There’s a bunch of covers thrown in for good measure, including a faithful rendition of The Cramps’ New Kind Of Kick, and a perfectly bastardised interpretation of Gloria, skinned and re-cut as Mongolia.
Almost 40 years ago Ken Russell exhorted the English people to ignore Ted Heath and Harold Wilson in favour of The Who; in 2012, Midnight Woolf offers us a simple path to satisfaction and enlightenment.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Let’s Dance
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: THEM, LINK WRAY, MUDDY WATERS
In A Word: Primitive
