Ten years passed between ¡Chutzpah! and Renaissance Men, although Ginger Wildheart was hardly inactive during that time. There were solo records, stints with Michael Monroe and Courtney Love, and the familiar cycle of Wildhearts break-ups and reunions. This return nevertheless feels substantial, particularly with classic-era bassist Danny McCormack back in the fold.
The Wildhearts' enduring trick is to make songs that sound as though several incompatible ideas have been forced into the same three or four minutes. "Dislocated" establishes the method immediately: furious punk-inflected hard rock, huge melodies and stacked vocals, with Cheap Trick, the Ramones, Motörhead, Discharge and KISS all somewhere in the genetic code. "My Side of the Bed" pushes that instability further, moving from a warped introduction into bright pop-punk, slowing down, accelerating again and piling handclaps, dissonance, effects and a substantial guitar solo into the same arrangement.
That tension between abrasion and melody runs through the album. "Diagnosis" suggests a particularly unruly punk version of AC/DC; "Let 'Em Go" turns itself into a pub chant; "Fine Art of Deception" is carried by a soaring chorus; and "My Kinda Movie" hangs on one of the record's nastiest riffs. "Emergency (Fentanyl Babylon)" brings a more sombre subject into the mix, addressing Britain's health-care crisis without forcing the band to abandon its characteristic noise and momentum.
The production is dense without burying the performances. Ginger's voice is frequently pushed to its limits, sometimes approaching a Lemmy-like rasp on the heavier passages before switching to cleaner and more melodic singing. The piled-up harmonies matter just as much as the guitars: even at their most aggressive, The Wildhearts have always understood that a song needs a hook worth remembering.
The old story about the band is that they arrived at exactly the wrong moment, making an unruly mixture of punk, metal and power pop while the commercial climate moved elsewhere. Renaissance Men does little to settle that argument because it makes the same contradictions sound essential again. The title fits: The Wildhearts remain specialists in dragging several eras of loud guitar music into the same room and refusing to make them behave.
GENRE: Hard Rock
RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2019
PRODUCED BY: Jim Pinder
LABEL: Graphite Records
RATING: 8/10