The Wolfhounds did an amazing set.
They haven't written any new music since they split up, which is
good for one reason, namely that we got to hear all our favourites.
Highlights that I recall were "Me", "Skyscrapers", "The
Anti-Midas Touch", "Blown Away" and "Rule of
Thumb". They certainly had more energy and feeling than many
new indie bands have these days. I did get to interview Dave Callahan
and Andy Bolton at the end of the evening but they really wanted
to go home and I didn't want to keep them, so it might not be one
of the best interviews I've done, plus I just recorded it on my
mp3-player which didn't really give it a professional sound quality.
But maybe that merely goes with the spirit of the evening. I don't
know if Dave was just tired, but he seemed more than a bit cynical
about music today, and life in general. But maybe that is what
drives him. Hopefully, you'll get to hear it soon.
THE RAIN FELL DOWN
Blog
Video
evidence | Photo
Evidence | Poster
New
product to support the show - CD86
The Wolfhounds unleashed the most scabrous, unholy, ferocious, screaming noise. There’s
every chance a number of indie kids are now suffering permanent hearing
damage and calling that gig “their Who concert”; it’d
be better calling it just a bit fucking stupid.
Possibly fucking stupid of me to stay right to the end, but when they
hit their scratchy intensity full-on they could be quite special. I part
company with The Wolfhounds somewhere around the second album, Bright
and Guilty, when they were a little too hard’n’heavy for
my liking, but up till then they had some true flashes of greatness.
It was a rare treat to hear Rent Act, as vital to 1988 as Elephant Stone
and There She Goes; as an epitaph, any band should be happy with that...
FIRE ESCAPE TALKING
(Read
Blog)
Finally, there are Wolfhounds. I’ve said
many times how Wolfhounds are one of the great lost groups of all
time. In the extracts from the Hungry Beat film Nicky Wire says
the same about McCarthy, and I well remember the article in Underground
magazine about the two groups – an article
that Richey once said made him want to be in a group. Indeed, one of the
most evocative moments of the entire two nights at the ICA is the moment
when McCarthy’s ‘Red Sleeping Beauty’ breathes into life
on the film soundtrack, accompanied by scratchy celluloid footage of a
beautifully young Tim Gane and Malcolm Eden. In an ideal world of course
we might have seen McCarthy and Wolfhounds reunited on the same stage once
again, but beggars can’t be choosers, and Wolfhounds are more than
enough. They storm through a stream of songs from their criminally ignored
four-album arsenal, each a barbed wire kiss of perfection, Pop taken
to pieces, fed through a blender, put back together and electrified with
the power of the brightest lightning strike.
Of all the groups it is Wolfhounds
more than anyone who recall the tensions of the times, who conjure something
of the rage and frustration so prevalent in the depths of the dark days
of Thatcher’s Britain. Of all the groups of the two nights, it
is Wolfhounds who sound fiercest. It is Wolfhounds who sound the most
strangely contemporary and timeless in the same moment. It is Wolfhounds
who take the breath away most acutely and whose noise effortlessly transcends
notions of revisionism or nostalgia. If this noise were being made by
a gang of truculent youths from the estates now, they would be lauded
as geniuses and plastered across MTV. Perhaps.
But they’re not, and they’re not, and on the evidence present on the ICA stage, that’s the world’s loss all over again.
ALISTAIR
FITCHETT
Tangents (Full
Article)
eKnockout pics taken by Lorne Thomson. Genius. See the other pics Lorne took at the ICA here.
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