It's fair to say I was already excited for this album after listening to the first two tracks released from it but now I've given the whole thing a listen, I'm glad to say my excitement was well founded. Victorious is exactly what you should expect from a Wolfmother record and fits right in with the band's short but strong back catalogue. Distorted guitar? Fuzzy bass? Heavy drumming? Apocalyptic organ riffing? Falsetto vocals? That's five checks!
Unfortunately, despite bigging it up in that opening paragraph, the album starts off on a fairly weak note in the form of "The Love That You Give". Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad track. It's solid, yes, but not spectacular or powerful enough to warrant the first place on the tracklist. To me, this 4th record is the band's triumphant return to making Wolfmother albums (even if it is mostly Andrew Stockdale, but then wasn't that always the case with Wolfmother?) and after hearing "Victorious" again, that would've been a far more suitable album opener.
It's punchy both musically and lyrically, it's got the classic galloping rhythm and it has enough epic riffs to challenge the average Black Sabbath song. It's the perfect way to announce to the world that these Aussie bastards are back, not a two and a half minute filler track that could've been omitted from the album without any real decline in overall quality. Luckily, that's the only major problem in my eyes although I should probably address something that most music snobs will consider a flaw when applied to this band.
Their "sound".
For some reason, Wolfmother get an unjustified amount of shit for sounding like a 70's retro act. Personally, I feel like that's an easy label to pin on the band and scathing comparisons between some of Wolfmother's better known songs and Hard Rock tracks from 40 years ago tend to be tenuous at best. Their music may be based around heavy riffs and falsetto vocals but those are just two staples of Rock music that the band happen to use; that argument could be applied to practically any modern Rock band with the right tropes at your disposal.
Also, why is it bad to sound good? It's like teenagers calling those older groups "Dinosaur Bands". Guess what? Dinosaurs are fucking awesome.
The reason I bring this up before I get too off-topic is because this album isn't just cheap nostalgia for fans cursing the fact that they were born too late to see Led Zeppelin in their prime. In fact, some of the songs are downright modern, reminding me of what I'd imagine The White Stripes would sound like if they were actually awesome ("Baroness") or the kind of contemporary-Alternative tune you'd hear during the credits of an award winning bittersweet Indie flick ("Pretty Peggy"); the latter of those two examples being a welcome break from the clashing drums and dynamic guitars but hardly experimental by the band's standards when you remember songs like "Vagabond".
I've always felt like Wolfmother were influenced by 70's styles but the actual sound of their music is a great blend of old and new. There are tracks on this album that may borrow inspiration from RBR (Riff-Based-Rock) or Classic Rock artists such as Budgie or Rod Stewart ("The Simple Life" and "Best Of A Bad Situation" respectively) but if you travelled back in time with these tracks on vinyl and played it for someone in 1976, it'd be like showing a Victorian shopkeeper a copy of Alan Moore's Watchmen.
Aside from one relatively forgettable psychedelic Hard Rocker ("Happy Face"), the rest of the album consists of songs that could've easily been written and recorded during any of the previous studio sessions, which is great news for fans. Overall, the album also feels more focused due to the slightly reduced number of tracks. The hit-to-meh ratio is stronger and if Stockdale decides to take another lengthy break and gradually release practically every song as a single like he did with the band's debut, I reckon he could get away with it based on the radio-friendly nature of each track.
At this point in the band's career, I think it's fair to say you know if you like Wolfmother or not. Victorious isn't a turning point in the band's sound or quality of written material but if you've bought the album because you know you like Wolfmother's music, you won't be disappointed with what you get. If I had to rate this for Wolfmother and Hard Rock fans, it's an easy 9/10. If you listened to "Victorious" and "City Lights" and liked what you heard, the rest of the album will almost certainly be right up your street as well.
However, on a non-personal and purely neutral level, the quality of this music doesn't push any boundaries or have the same wow factor that earlier tracks like "Woman" or "Dimension" did when they first dropped so I feel like rating it that high (or higher than critically acclaimed albums I've talked about on here in the past) pisses all over any kind of scale I use to score albums, hence my rating of 7/10. It's an album that rocks, plain and simple. It might not be perfect but it'll give me joy when listening to it, just like the first two albums and hopefully many more to come!
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