Music / Reviews
Review: The Wildhearts, Fleece
The Wildhearts have a new album out and it’s another absolute corker. 21st Century Love Songs also finds Ginger Wildheart at his angriest and most misanthropic, taking pot shots at everything from social media to right wing politicians, their dupes and cunts in general (including, on at least two occasions, himself) – all wrapped up in a gazillion riffs and melodies, as usual. With anyone else, one might be tempted to enquire, “You alright, mate?” But Ginger was being open about his mental health struggles (attempted suicide, arrest, sectioning, etc) long before it became fashionable to do so.
That means we’re never entirely sure which Ginger Wildheart we’re going to get until he turns up on stage. And tonight . . . good grief, it’s like he’s been scarfing down the happy pills. He’s absolutely delighted to be here and we, naturally, are equally delighted to be in the company of the seven-legged rock’n’roll machine again. Maybe it’s the sheer cathartic release of being permitted to rock once more, but the packed Fleece feels like a giant love-in between band and audience. Ginger even asserts that every gig they’ve ever played in Bristol has been wonderful. That may be technically correct (and I’ve been there for ’em all, right back to that first support slot with Love/Hate at the Bierkeller in 1992) but the last time the mercurial frontman played the Fleece as a solo act the gig ended in chaos as he berated the audience, fended off an idiot stage invader, headbutted his microphone and stormed offstage.
“You are not your diagnosis!” bellows Ginger on opener Diagnosis from 2019’s Renaissance Men – already established as a classic in the Wildhearts canon – and everyone joins in. It’s a shrewd set list, carefully crafted to remind us of why we fell in love with the Wildhearts in the first place by wheeling out a selection of those chorus-heavy chart hits (Vanilla Radio, Sick of Drugs, Caffeine Bomb, etc) between taking a deeper dive into the catalogue and underlining that this is no nostalgia act. That said, nostalgia is the subject of Remember These Days, something of a companion piece to Thunder’s Wonder Days, which seems to have sprung rather more riffs than on the album. Until, that is, you realise that, in keeping with the theme, they’re peppering it with older riffs stretching all the way back to Turning American and Splattermania.
is needed now More than ever
Tempting though it may be to treat the Wildhearts as the Ginger Wildheart show – he clearly calls the shots and writes 99% of their material, after all – guitarist CJ and drummer Ritch Battersby are both on excellent form. But it’s bassist Danny who springs the surprise, stepping up to the microphone to jest about being legless before taking the lead vocal on Anthem from 1997’s atypically atrocious Endless, Nameless album – a rare Wildhearts single not sung by Ginger. Stripped of that awful production, it actually sounds pretty good.
Ginger introduces Dislocated as being his favourite song from Renaissance Men “because I get to scream a lot” and Splitter from the new album as being “about getting rid of the cunts in your life”. But hang on a minute. Isn’t that something of a lyrical preoccupation? It sure is, and they knowingly follow it with Let ‘Em Go – an anthem for our times and one of those great songs in the tradition of She Loves You and I Want You to Want Me that opens with the chorus – muting the sound so the entire room can take over: “Let ‘em go, let ’em go/Let the shit-filled rivers flow/While your belly burns in anger, no one ever needs to know/Let ’em go, let ’em go/Let the wankers find their own/If they’re not there to share your troubles/You’ll be better off on your own.”
Those of us who love the Wildhearts at their heaviest and most prog-metally are rewarded with the twisty-turny Caprice and the epic Inglorious before they wrap it up with the like-Motorhead-on-even-more-speed of Suckerpunch and chant-along I Wanna Go Where the People Go. Quibbles? Well it would have been nice to hear a little more from the new album, especially Sleepaway and Sort Your Fucking Shit Out, but you can’t have everything. Well, you could, but a five hour set might have exhausted even this audience.
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: October 2021
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