Wolfmother /// “Far Away” /// Cosmic Egg
Hey, 2005: it’s been ages. Long enough for Australian shredders Wolfmother to fall apart and come back together with a radically different lineup—the Andrew Stockdale-led trio now a Stockdale-led quartet with double the guitars and a keyboardist due to some extreme bad blood with the old guard. The new crew live up to their stoner-metal name on the long-awaited Cosmic Egg, happily enough, carefully incorporating ferocious piano octaves (“Sundial”) and Zeppelinesque string arrangements (“10,000 Feet”) alongside their customary power-chord swagger and face-melting antics (“In The Castle”). The tropes have been used a thousand times before, but rarely with such manic creativity brought the the table—no surprise there. The only number that counts as a sharp left turn would be “Far Away,” which uses Stockdale’s unmistakable falsetto to fashion a fist-pumping hybrid of mannered indie pop (day-glo melody, folksy strums) and, well, a fucking 70s monster ballad (nearly parodic hard rock/blues second half with chord changes like old Fastball song on steroids). It’s a tectonic shift on a gradualist album, one that makes you sit up and listen instead of just thrashing around with an air guitar.
