Beneath the beachy, balmy surface, Golden Wolf’s songs are densely textured and detailed, studded with shimmering guitars, chirping keyboards, riffs and counter-riffs. Having been in this game for 20 years, Angus Stone (who boasts a lengthy back catalogue with sister Julia, releases under his own name, and more recently in his Dope Lemon guise) could be forgiven for weariness or going through the motions. Here, though, the cumulative effect of Stone’s waves of sound speak to his project’s dedicated vision. Dope Lemon’s releases have house style artwork and even their own font - he knows precisely what he wants here.
A collection of tracks with such consistent mood obviously lives and dies on how interesting that mood is over the course of 45 minutes. It’s an approach that can work – Galaxie 500 weren’t exactly prone to sudden gear shifts, but produced some of the most compelling work of the late 80s. Safe to say the resigned melancholia of Dean Wareham et al is a touch more captivating than the sun baked bittersweetness Golden Wolf has to offer. There are far worse places to park yourself than under the shade of this album, but you may find yourself a bit restless before things are wrapped up.
The lack of momentum rears its head on track one. “John Belushi” is a fine mood setter, using the titular comic oaf and drug enthusiast to spin a narrative of accepting life in all its wild glories. The track could use some of the erstwhile Blues Brother’s manic energy; unlike the frenetic Chicagoan, it plods along at midtempo for well over five minutes. Stone has plenty of fun gallows humour lyrics – “I'm the undertaker's favourite song to dance to / We're all just pine boxes doing the tango” – and the John Squire-esque guitar runs are lovely, but after a point, the track feels like an aural paternoster lift, as though Stone has missed his stop and so has to go all the way round again.
For avoidance of doubt, the issue isn’t with long songs, but songs that are too long. The epic “Maggie’s Moonshine” is a sprawling highlight, a cod-slow jam with slightly reticent saxophone, filtered and piled up vocals, irresistibly shuffling percussion, and a completely unnecessary false finish. The faux-lounge lizard is a surprisingly popular persona in modern music, and Stone slips into louche mode armed with one of the LP’s stickiest choruses. The hook is equal parts sultry and silly – he’s going nowhere fast but it’s hard to care with such righteous vibes.
Elsewhere, Golden Wolf finds a sweet spot somewhere in mid-00s indie (specifically the stuff that harkened back to the 80s, giving things a bit of a copy-of-a-copy feel). At their best, these tracks sound timeless; at their worst, warmed over. The strutting “Sugarcat” benefits from Stone’s detached, almost sneered vocals, and twinkling keys that can’t help but hit the spot. “We Solid Gold” feels like a hit, with its warm sense of reserved optimism and chugalug guitars. It’s a nod to proper Reagan rock, laced with millennial malaise; Stone could transform this into a proper stomper, but what would be the point of all that?
“Electric Green Lambo” is far less successful. There’s no fruit hanging lower for the indie ironist than cod-funk, and this half baked tune is a particularly uninspiring example of the form. Stone overwhelms the track with a cavalcade of shrill toplines, any one of which might have been cool alone, but altogether makes the piece overwhelmingly shrill, then gives it up as a bad job just past the 2.30 mark.
With such consistency, it’s not too surprising that the easy highlight is the most distinct cut. Coming at the halfway point, “Yamasuki – Yama Yama” is the perfect jolt, an appealing energy reset. Granted, it’s not as big a diversion as you might hear on some bolder works, but the Japanese singers on the chorus and heavy timpani drumming are as grabby as the record gets. It curdles into psychedelic nastiness for a sludgy, heavy finale. If Golden Wolf presents mostly as a nice day on the Gold Coast, this track is some much needed Kem Nunn surf-noir.
Golden Wolf gives plenty on a moment-to-moment basis, and if the album doesn’t manage to be entirely engaging for its duration, perhaps that isn’t so much of a problem. The tone it captures is one of wistful peace, and in the right time and headspace, it could well be ideal.
