DEWOLFF: Wolffpack (ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Thanks to "Roux-Ga-Roux" (2016) and "Thrust" (2018), DeWolff has easily climbed to the top of the sixties and seventies revival currently in fashion. Daddy-style rock made of wet guitars and mellow Hammond organ sprinkled with a bluesy pinch, such is the formula imagined by these three Batavians with a look worthy of the Bee Gees. One year after "Tascam Tapes", the trio is already back, appropriating the metronomic productivity of their elders and influences, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and other Black Sabbath. From them, he also retained the importance of going to the essential, not to scatter in vain filling.

Each album of DeWolff is thus similar to a skewer of songs all more unstoppable the ones than the others. With a personal signature that owes as much to the slightly androgynous voice of guitarist Pablo van de Poel as to the vintage recipe described above, does this mean that the band does not evolve? It is not, obviously, as "Wolffpack", a surprising and generous album, states.

Embodied by the stirring and joyful 'Yes You Do' and 'Treasure City Moonchild', the beginning is classic. The first track is really energetic, offering a real orgy of keyboards and guitar drowned in effects while the ex Wolfmother Ian Peres affixes his bass lines. The second one welcomes the guitarist of The Dawn Brothers, Bas van Holt, for a result with an even more affirmed blues imprint. But from the velvety 'Do Me' onwards, the menu becomes less agressive, letting funk and soul color the compositions, which are nevertheless still as finely chiseled and seductive.

'Sweet Loretta' is adorned with Gospel touches of great effect, as well as the huge 'Half Of Your Love' which seems to have escaped from a Motown album of the 60/70s. If 'Lady J.' and 'Bona Fide' return to a heavier (hard) rock, without deserting this funky land, 'Roll Up The Rise' and even more 'R U My Saviour' which mixes tenacious energy and gleaming horns underline this shift towards a more unctuous music. At the risk perhaps to disappoint some who will judge "Wolffpack" a bit languid and too soulful.

Wrongly, because the Dutch, by opening up to other styles, quietly renew themselves, showing a stainless brio to polish up songs as unstoppable as rich in ambiences and instrumentation. By doing so, they affirm even more their difference within the vintage revival. - Official website

DEWOLFF

WOLFFPACK

MASCOT LABEL GROUP

ROCK