Let’s take account of Madchester’s enduring images: a heavy-lidded Ian Brown moaning “I wanna be adored” but not sounding like he wants to be awake. Bez freaky-dancin' his way through the Happy Mondays' prime and not even being the most loutish guy in the group. The rumors that Shaun Ryder ditched a meeting with EMI to score heroin, which was referred to as "KFC" by the band. And the sweaters. Point being that while the clash of ecstasy, acid house, and rock'n'roll resulted in a brief period of brilliant, forward-thinking music, the leading lights of the scene were never all that bright. That hindsight puts an interesting perspective on Australian duo Jagwar Ma’s gleeful debut Howlin’; their early singles cast them as the purest Madchester revivalists in some time and the full-length delivers on that promise. The music is a heady swirl of baggy beats and unabashed Beach Boys melodies, while the lyrics are wholly uninterested in anything intellectual. It’s silly enough to cause skepticism and charming enough to make you wonder what kind of scrutiny Screamadelica or Thrills, Pills & Bellyaches would meet if they were released in 2013.
The album gets its title from a line on the shambling “Uncertainty”: “When you’re gloomy/ Howlin’ looks so good to me.” The characters within Howlin’ are gloomy, they’re certainly not depressed; nothing that a little howlin’ couldn’t fix. They howl because they’re confused by loneliness, and unlike fellow Australian psych pop space cadets Tame Impala, solitude isn’t bliss; it can be externalized and rendered as a goofy Austin Powers-pop trifle on “That Loneliness”. They howl because it’s women, not drugs, that offer transcendence and Jagwar Ma needs the hook up; fluid breakbeats and classic psychedelic effects (backwards guitar, naturally) drive “Man I Need” and “Come Save Me”, tart and hooky songs too bashful to be overbearing. This is festival stuff, the movements coming off a bit drunk and a little wearied by the sun. The beat-driven tracks, “What Love” and “Four”, aren’t actually dance music, per se-- they lack the precision and rigor of proper electronic music. When Gabriel Winterfield yells “exercise your chemistry!” it's meaningless, but at least lets you know this isn’t rocket science.
In that sense, Jagwar Ma’s guilelessness works in their favor; they’re hardly the first guys who’ve banged the drums on Madchester's behalf, but they avoid the shamanistic mock profundity that resulted in a similarly positioned band named the Music making a song called “The People”. Ewan Pearson’s mixing is sweet, slick, and colorful as Skittles shells, meaning Jagwar Ma avoid the leathery cock-rocking that marred the Big Pink; the latter boasted “these girls fall like dominos,” whereas when Winterfield yelps “let me show me you babe just all the man I can be!” he sounds ready to pull a bouquet of flowers from behind his back. Only on the last two tracks do Jagwar Ma aspire to “serious” artistic ambitions, and the result is a preview of Howlin’s “darker,” “introspective” and duller sequel. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
It’s possible to be incredibly ambitious and disarming at the same time, and in that way, Howlin’ isn't that different in approach to Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories-- a backwards looking record about loving the present moment, a big-tent affair that can be misunderstood as a reactionary record. (It's no less reactionary than Noel Gallagher claiming Howlin' to be more important than an Oasis reunion.) From the moment “What Love” fades in with its loose-limbed, floppy rhythm, Howlin’ ensures everybody will be dancing, few will be doin' it right, but they'll all be feelin’ alright regardless.
