The Skinny:Wolfmother is an Australian band from Erskineville — a suburb of Sydney. The band consists of Andrew Stockdale (vocals/guitar), Chris Ross (bass/keyboards) and Myles Heskett (drums). Their music is inspired by rock acts such as MC5, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Kyuss.

The Review:     What does this mean?

Why: If you miss rock on the radio that reminds you of Led Zeppelin, The Guess Who, and The Deep Purple, then put in some Wolfmother and jam out. This is a rock CD. Not like American Idiot was a rock CD, but Wolfmother is a good old-fashioned American rock CD, which is kind of funny as it comes from some Australia.

Catchy good riffs and solid energy fuel the majority of this album. There’s enough psychedelic grooves and good arrangements here to make even the hardest hater bang his head in rhythm or perhaps more aptly, ask someone nearby for some weed. The only problem here is that even though Wolfmother fully capture the feel, and what’s more the essence of that style of rock, they fail to do that much with it. So much of the album is the band trying to establish themselves and their sound that very little is left for them to try and experiment with it. The bands that they fell in step with (i.e. Zepplin) ranged everywhere from acoustic-driven songs (Over the Hills and Far Away) to hard rock (Black Dog) to pushing the envelope (Stairway to Heaven.) Wolfmother fail to actually go to that level with their music. Instead, most of the time you’re listening to their CD and think “Yeah this is good, it sounds like this other song.” Or “Yeah this is good, and it reminds me of that song by that old-school band.”

So yeah, this album is good. 3 stars worth of goodness actually now that I think about it. Now that they have established their sound with this CD, I’m looking forward to what they exactly do with their sound on their forthcoming releases.

Not know them? This CD will fit in nicely with other such albums as: Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf, Led Zepplin’s Zoso, and The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells.