Wolf And Cub
Vessels
Dot Dash/Inertia

'Vessels' is full with sounds. There are layers upon layers of guitars, processed to kingdom come. It's an assault, sure. But Wolf And Cub sounds best when it's not completely covered in tar and electricity. Hammond dissolves slowly and not before a deceptively smoky riff lingers just long enough to expose a band that can play the softer stuff just as well as the stompy rockers.

The production on 'Vessels' is certainly meaty. Joel Byrne's vocal is right at the front and one's digging of the record could depend on how loud you like your singers. His guitar work and Tom Mayhew's bass have always been an important aspect of the fuzzy psych sound the band traverses live and here the bass is as beefy as it should be. Any beefier and these songs would move closer to hybridised dance-floor rock music. Instead, the twin drumming, very live-sounding and almost brittle in parts, assures that Wolf And Cub is keeping one foot firmly in the rock camp.

There are some very nice tones, like the guitars of Bolan, Sumner, Shields and Morello have been melted down into one sparkly brew. But the best part of the album comes in the last song Vultures, as Byrne repeats but one simple trem'd guitar lick in a sea of many which, as a mantra, speaks more than any of the vocal-led or noise-coated cards that pepper the album.

A lot of people are going to like 'Vessels'. It's a record with a lot of minutiae and, despite all the fuzz, a lot of clarity. Detractors have called Wolf And Cub 'jammers' but 'Vessels' is no jam. It's an introduction to the kind of ambition these guys are sweating out and if Vultures is indeed the segueway for the next one, then I say bring it on.

Lenin Simos