Wolf Gang – Suego Faults (2011)

Wolf Gang – Suego Faults (2011)

Another album and band that I discovered completely by chance. Apparently, this was their first album. Too bad I missed them at the time. I think Wolf Gang could have been one of my favourite bands of the 2010s, and I would definitely have seen them in concert if I had discovered them at their peak.

If you want to know what I was listening to instead, I have to go back in my memory. In any case, I listened to Franz Ferdinand, Blood Red Shoes, Keane and And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead since the early 2000s. I’ve always been a fan of these indie rock bands. I know I bought all the albums by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dresden Dolls and Panic At The Disco. I was crazy about lots of bands that disappeared too soon, like The Bravery, The Rakes, and Katzenjammer. I love the first albums by Bloc Party and The Pretty Reckless. But this Suego Faults album is better than the second albums by those bands!

Yes, the list is so long! Hot Hot Heat, We Are Scientists, Kaiser Chiefs, and The Wombats have also always done very good work. But we’re not really here to talk about all these bands, otherwise we’ll never finish.

Let’s talk about those who are similar to Wolf Gang. I’m thinking in particular of Two Door Cinema Club, Fun., Empire of the Sun and The Klaxons. None of these bands are completely alike, but they do have some similarities. Their singing styles are not exactly masculine, macho or virile. On the contrary, there is room for high-pitched notes that may seem effeminate to those who don’t know much about singing and the various ways of using one’s voice. Of course, if you only listen to metal with musicians dressed in black, you can’t appreciate the Scissor Sisters, to name but one example.

Ahhhh… I remember now! I was listening to Cults when this album came out. Team Me, too. Guano Apes were also about to release a new album. You have a vague idea of everything that distracted me from this band that I’m desperately trying to review!

This album isn’t perfect, but it’s really good. At the same time, I say that, but it’s highly likely that after several more listens, I’ll think it’s a true masterpiece!

There’s an electro side to it at times, with good energy interspersed with quieter tracks.

The title track, Suego Faults, is a rather pretty piano-synth ballad that could make you think there’s a whole orchestra behind the band.

All the tracks on the album were written by songwriter and lead singer Max McElligott.

Originally, there were ten tracks. But a new version has been released with three additional songs.

A wonderful late discovery, which I listen to regularly without too much regret, although I do regret that the band no longer exists.

Wow! I just discovered that Lasse Petersen was the drummer… and he was also in The Rakes, which I mentioned earlier! Go figure…

The other three members of this quintet are Gavin Slater on guitar, James Wood on bass and Jamie Jones on keyboards.

Wikipedia also tells me that: ‘Duncan Gillespie, from NME magazine, gave the album a rating of 4 out of 5, describing it as “a sparkling debut album reminiscent of Byrne and Bowie.”’ Which is completely crazy, because I clearly thought of Talking Heads during at least two songs. Stay and Defend for its strange distant resemblance to Naive Melody and Where Are You Now for its bass line.

As for David Bowie, it’s only now that I realise there are certain similarities, particularly on Planets, which I love.
For your information, NME (founded as a newspaper in 1952) is the New Musical Express. It is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, a bi-monthly magazine and a brand.

Wolf Gang had played and toured with Coldplay, The Killers, Florence and the Machine, Keane (whom I mentioned earlier), Metric, and The Naked and Famous. They supported Editors at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The year after this album was released, in April 2012, they played at Coachella in Palm Springs. In short, these musicians have achieved a great deal for a band that has only released two albums and four singles, namely The King and All of His Men, Pieces of You, Lions In Cages, and Dancing With The Devil, all of which are on this album! The second album appeared three years later: Alveron (2014).

Suego Faults is probably an album that went unnoticed (and not just by me!) and was certainly unfairly forgotten or overlooked. Yet it is a great moment in alternative rock, indie rock and symphonic rock, better known as progressive rock.

PS: I myself played in an indie rock band that was not at all successful. Yet we also had potential! We were called Only Pirates and we never got to record an album and only played two concerts. Sad…