Album Review: The Wildhearts - "21st Century Love Songs"

 

The arrival of a new Wildhearts album is always a cause for excitement around here. When the group's classic line-up of Ginger, CJ, Danny and Ritch returned to the studio with 2019's Renaissance Men, arguably their strongest offering since phuq some twenty plus years before, it seemed as if the group were back to save music from the various anodyne copycats who make up the majority of the rock scene today.

But if that record was a brilliantly schizophrenic flame spewing beast then with 21st Century Love Songs, they've raised the bar yet again. It's there right from the way the opening title track packs in stomping stadium rock, turbo nutter thrash and a soaring string section backed blissed out five second middle eight before it goes straight back into the charge. Former single Remember These Days is similarly Jekyll and Hyde, packing about four different songs into its five minutes as it lurches from punk to grunge to an almost post-punk style middle section yet somehow still holding together perfectly.

Splitter kicks in like a bastard with its pummelling riff and wraps itself tighter and tighter like an anaconda round your throat as the song piledrives on, not letting up for a second. Institutional Submission is even heavier, like the group's self-titled album with an added shot of adrenalin to stop it lumbering too much building to a brilliantly vicious foul-mouthed vocal tirade at its conclusion. Sleepaway starts off as a big lighters-in-the-air slice of stadium rock before the group slowly crank up the tempo then go into an unexpected call-and-response shoutalong bit. And then into a bit of Stray Cats style rockabilly just for the sake of it obviously. It's like a whole album in one song and possibly the best track on here.

The gleefully foul-mouthed You Do You is probably the closest thing on here to the Renaissance Men album with its shoutalong chorus of "Everyone is an expert these days" and its grinding Therapy? style riff. Definitely a live favourite in the making here I think. Former single Sort Your Fucking Shit Out is another wonderfully all-over-the-place effort with its power-pop leanings as it slowly increases the intensity with its foghorn-level message.

Directions is another one which shows off just how well this band can do light and shade with the concrete heavy riffs of the verses giving way to a surprisingly melodic chorus. A Physical Exorcism is every bit as full-on as its title suggests with the guitars, bass and drums seemingly in a breakneck race to the finish line with each other. It all ends with My Head Wants Me Dead which starts out all Romantics/Jags style power-pop before building to a furious raging paranoid conclusion as befitting its title.

It was always going to be difficult to top Renaissance Men but 21st Century Love Songs sees the Wildhearts raising the bar even further. Gleefully ripping up the rule book and taking the sound off to wherever they damn well please, this is the sound of a band firing on all cylinders and there honestly isn't a weak link in here anywhere. This will definitely be up there as one of the best albums of 2021 and in an age of backward-looking bores like Greta Van Fleet, Massive Wagons and the various hollow-eyed New Wave of Classic Rock say-nowt Stepford rock bands (a quick point while we're here - if it's "classic rock" then it can't be "new" folks. SYFSO), groups like the Wildhearts who are savvy enough to know that rock is always at its most interesting when you get bands with the guts and nous to take it off to places it hasn't been before and keep it interesting and bollocks to convention seem to be an evermore vital commodity as the years go by. What more can I say? Buy the bugger.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕 (10/10)