My Recommendation: Wolfmother - Joker And The Thief

Today’s recommendation comes from Erskineville, Australia a suburb of Sydney by the band Wolfmother. The band has gone through many lineup changes since its inception in 2000 with the only constant being Andrew Stockdale around whose talent the band revolves.

First off, if you have a curious bone like me you’d be thinking where, why or how the heck did they came up with this band name Wolfmother, I was hoping for a good story but it wasn’t much, here’s what Andrew said about it

“Chris just texted it through to me before we got our first show and I was thinking, ‘What the hell is that, it sounds like a death metal band, are you serious?' But nobody came up with anything else. He got it out of a book called Skinny Legs and All, a Tom Robbins psychedelic book. So we told the people who offered us the show we were Wolfmother and from there everyone was like, ‘so have you heard of those Wolfmother guys?' And it kind of stuck, it's grown on me now and I think it suits us in a way.”

Listening to Wolfmother it seems the time somehow turned back to 1970s, and the days of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin have come soaring back as Wolfmother refuses to part ways from the pounding drums and raw guitar riffs of that era. Some people might take up an issue with this as lack of artistic creativity but I don’t mind it as not so many people are playing this brand of rock these days and the few who are trying to keep that era alive I say we should embrace them with open arms. They have been compared to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath but in my opinion their sound is more Psychedelic Rock then Hard or Blues Rock.

The song I’m recommending, Joker And The Thief comes from their self titled debut album, the mentioned Joker and the Thief are a reference to the famous Bob Dylan song All Along The Watchtower, also listening to the song you can hear many of the old AC/DC arena anthems in your head too, Andrew has been forthright about it, here’s what he said

"I've totally ripped it off from Dylan. I was in a shop one morning walking into where we jam. I saw this AC/DC 'Thunderstruck' and I was like, 'I want to write a stadium rock song.' I went into the studio and said, 'Doo-duh-lee, doo-duh-lee. What's the best thing to do after that? Just do something cleaner - Doo, doo, doo.' Because, you know, you've got to have a big intro and then you have to have a balls-to-the-wall riff to knock it on the head in the next stage."

By the way, I could also hear a lot of The White Stripes, when I first heard the song I thought I was listening to Jack White. This has been one of their most successful songs it has been featured in almost all categories possible, movie soundtracks, commercials, video games, sports arenas you name it the song has conquered it already, to name a few the song has been featured in Jackass Number Two, Shoot ‘Em Up, Shrek The Third, The Hangover, Need For Speed: Carbon, MLB 07: The Show, Mitsubishi Ad, Rock Band, Rock Revolution and has been played in arenas all over like Madison Square Garden, Rogers Arena, RBC Center, United Center for teams like New York Rangers, Vancouver Canucks, Chicago Blackhawks and many more, if I try to name all of them it’ll become a very long post.

Loaded with a loud riff, thumping drums and screechy vocals the song starts on a high and maintains it throughout the song, slows down a bit towards the guitar solo which features some very clever distortions interlaced with keyboards. There are many very good live performances of this song available, I’ll throw in three of them here, don’t forget to checkout the Facebook page for a latest Wolfmother interview and some more live performances. Here’s the song,