The Wildhearts - Chutzpah!

The original inglorious bastards

The Wildhearts have always been more schizophonic than their pop-metal reputation suggests; preciously, they’ve embraced Celtic balladry, industrial distortion and children’s choirs. Yet recent albums have seen the obtuse angles of Ginger’s songwriting become more streamlined. Were the ’Hearts finding too much comfort in sound?

- Happily, Chutzpah! throws a handful of curveballs into proceedings. Most distinctive is the bonkers title track, which flows from thrash to a vocodered Super Furry Animals’ Ice Hockey Hair-style chorus and into an exultant outro closely related to Teenage Fanclub’s The Concept.

Not everything here is as fulfilling. The Only One is too nice for a band who once sang, “Baby can’t you see I’m shitting brown water?” on Top Of The Pops, while the exhilaration of hearing Ginger attempt his best Perry Farrell approximation on John Of Violence is undersold by a chorus so routine that even Feeder would’ve reconsidered.

Such issues are soon forgotten with some of the band’s best material in years; The Jackson Whites is a left-field metallic attack on a par with Suckerpunch, while You Are Proof… mixes the sugar rush of guitarist CJ’s old band The Jellys with a flurry of attitude. That The Wildhearts can’t be broken makes it all worthwhile.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Backstage Alliance | tbc

Reviewed by Ben Hopkins
<< Back to Issue 367

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