The Wildhearts: C/D?

Get 'PHUQ' next, then 'Earth Vs', then find the fan club version of 'fishing for luckies'. Then get the Ginger singles club releases.

Ginger (songwriter) does Genius pop, alt-rock, metal, rock n roll. I don't like much straight ahead rock n roll stuff but they are brilliant.

'Must be destroyed' has left me cold and limp though. Too shiny and too clean.

i have no idea what their new shit sounds like, but I just played "Suckerpunch" and "Junkenstein" back to back and nearly toppled my desk over from all the furious and entirely pathetic air-drumming (and I broke two pencils in the process).

**PICK**
WILDHEARTS - -Though their ingenious cross between Faster Pussycat and Husker Du probably peaked with the their 1993 debut, *Earth Vs. the Wildhearts* (yell very very loud for "Loveshit"), and though their recent singles-and-B-sides comp *Riff After Riff* stomps all over their somewhat overpowerpoppish new *Must Be Destroyed*, these reformed glamsters easily rank as one of the past decade's great British hard rock bands.

Funny podcast where a guy provides running commentary to an unlistenable self/audience-recorded bootleg.

Definite classic. They were the first band I ever saw live, back in 1994 in Warrington, and it was incredible. It's really only the older stuff that I'm familiar with now, but P.H.U.Q. is indisputable genius in my world.

Surely, surely, "Sky Babies" is one of the most implausibly epic/enthralling/kick-ass hard-rock songs ever recorded.

Dud, mostly. They never packed much serious thud. As a power pop band, great. But that's not how they were sold. Fine band if you thought the Shoes or The Quick were the pinnacle of hard pop and glam. Warning -- inflammatory: Clean up the language and clothes and they could open for Hannah Montana.

xhuxk liked 'em more than I did. A couple good hooks per record but no guitar hero to push it over the top. As compared to vintage Slade or Status Quo, yougottabekidding...

revive again... had never heard of these guys, but i was hooked when sick of drugs came up on my meat puppets pandora station. i like their live album a lot, since the studio albums are so polished, while the live album has a dirty edge to it that adds to the music.

Fishing For Luckies (the album SOD is on) quite simply and utterly slays. It takes down every motherfucker in the room. With its big cock. I cannot make myself any clearer.

Has anyone heard their cover album from last year? Fugazi and the Super Furry Animals covered, apparently.

Cover album on Spotify. Fishing For Luckies still slays.

I seem to remember Earth VS the Wildhearts nearing the record for biggest number of ACE drumrolls per song on an album. Also Endless Nameless is one of the most amazingly mastered rock records i've ever heard. Go to 2 mins 45:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqfqytdd_38

Ginger is sort of the pop version of Devin Townsend isn't he? Overproductive sometimes genius pop songwriter who doesn't know when or how to stop. Also a nice guy. Except unlike Devin he had some moderate pop success for a while (in the UK anyway). My brain is also dredging up the idea that Devin maybe actually played a few shows with them around the Endless era? Or am I making that up?

I still havent checked out the new albums. I loved them back in the day though

You're not making that up! Ginger's a sorta pop-metal auteur, and Devin's more a shoegaze-metal often-genius IMO. They're good mates still. More pertinently, Ginger is good mates with/a big fan of Cardiacs, and wrote a little ditty entitled 'Tim Smith' on the latest Wildhearts album as a kind of 'get well soon' tribute. Bless 'im.

Plenty of excellent Wildhearts material. The songs tend to be either pop numbers or extended suites which comprise pop bits with long instrumental passages in between. Ginger's certainly got a method, but it works nicely. Still haven't got Endless, Nameless; really want it. It's apparently lethal, which is a good thing. As I said upthread, Fishing For Luckies (the extended version with Sick Of Drugs among others) is *astounding* and by a stretch my favourite pop-metal album ever.

Ginger's not a soft-touch for all his pop, mind. He's pretty much the real deal and can metal with the best of 'em. Check the video for 2008's Destroy All Monsters...

Ginger is sort of the pop version of Devin Townsend isn't he?

might explain why devin was in the band then! (for 5 mins)

not seen this TOTP performance before. pretty loud for totp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG8wNh9PbwE

There's youtube videos of Devin Townsend playing with them, at Reading I think, perhaps...

yes, he did. that was the gig at which danny had a broken leg, if I recall correctly...

I went to the Wildheart's farewell gig at Brixton Academy in 1994, my first gig in London. Very good it was too, although not so much a farewell as a see you soon.

good fucking christ :D @ hearing Endless, Nameless for the first time

I had totally no idea these guys did an album last year until I happened on a thread on another messageboard (unfaithful etc) where multiple people declared it the best album of 2009 - can this be true?! anyone heard it?

hahahaha surely NOT the best album of '09...their s/t record from 2008 (I think) had its moments - can't imagine the new one being that much better as to claim '09's crown

although it DOES have a very impressively-named track which I have of course dutifully heard (it isn't bad!)

may give the whole album a go but I can guarantee it won't electrify me like E,N is doing atm

fuck me if this album isn't the most completely thrilling thing I've heard in a long, long time

THIS, my friends, is ROCK AND ROLL - and it makes The Stooges sound like a mid-range school band (which in fairness etc etc)

this album sucked at the time and sucked even more live

^^^hates fun

believe me, noone had any fun at that gig.

weird, had a notion to listen to these guys today and this thread has just been updated...

Anyway, has anyone heard their covers album? At least 2 songs on there I like (Ice Hockey Hair, Waiting Room)...

only listened to their Ice Hockey Hair, which is great

wow might have to download for the ice hockey cover.
yes endless nameless is one of the most insanely mastered/mixed records i've ever heard.

Pretty sure no-one else needs to cover Waiting Room given that iirc Limp Bizkit and the Chili Peppers have already 'made it their own'

in good company then!

Endless Nameless was not what i expected. In an excellent way.

I was never a fanboy but that one seriously rocked?

It was such a disappointment, but my judgement will always be tempered by the really lousy show, ginger being an abusive drugged up cunt on stage and the really unprofessional show, the 3 previous times i saw them they were bloody wonderful. The album is not a patch on the 1st 2.

new worst review ever on amg!

^^:D

pfunkboy zip it, it's a completely different sort of album

youre right, cuz the first 2 were great.

ginger's making the best goddamned music of his life

unfortunately for you all you can't hear the new album, Albion, coz you didn't pleeeeedge

lol

this album is a monumental pop-metal achievement, partly coz it doesn't shirk on the psych or the prog either, but mostly coz it marries vivid tunes to a quite incredible massy synth-drippin' heavenblare

it & devin townsend's 'deconstruction' feel like the pinnacle of this kind of music

hm bad call - more like 'Addicted' than 'Deconstruction' - the Mutation project closer to the latter

Right and now I discover this :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNga2vAZQew

:D :D :D :D :D :D

new album's good. 'better than it has any right to be' is how the cliche goes iirc

i said on the rolling metal thread how terrific it was.

So I see!

The first half of this is pretty stellar. Not sure they keep it up the whole way but there's some great stuff here

Or maybe I'm thrown by Diagnosis being such a monster closing track, confusingly placed in the middle of the album

New album is great