Wolf and Cub
One To The Other

The great opportunity that Wolf and Cub present, that of a visionary group creating mammoth, brutal castles of noise founded upon a solid rock base, went begging on their first record. Though able to drain their audience of all their energy and bodily fluids at their shows, on record they revealed a paucity of detail in their songwriting, showing that they had built the house of their music on sand. Furtive psych-guitars dry-humped clumsy, vague couplets which substituted for actual lyrical depth or style. It was the work of a band still finding its feet.

A couple of years hence, and they haven’t been found yet, but there are some good leads. ‘One to the Other’ is the first single from their forthcoming second album and contains some rich, provocative bass and guitar sounds, eking out a dirty, pleasurable groove from its start. But this quickly gives way to mediocre riffage on the chorus, and again the words are creatively inert. The tactic of composing and repeating only two lines may hearken to bygone, simpler eras of music, or emphasise music and feeling over words and ideas, but in the instance of the title track and its three brothers (one a quality remix by the Bumblebeez, the best track on the single) it results in work that is ruggedly handsome but unfinished and unsatisfying.

They remain on the wrong side of the divide between potential and brilliance.

by Matt Giles