I made my finger bleed playing along to one of my favourite songs on this album – the titular song, “Wild Things”. The song isn’t fast, and I’m not particularly great on guitar – I had simply been bitten on the index finger of my fingering hand by our hamster, Moomin. But I didn’t care, it’s a great song to play along to. I didn’t know what key it was in, so I just found a couple of notes that sounded good and pretended I was on stage with Phillipa Brown herself.
Extremely catchy, infectious electro pop.
This is my first time hearing any music by Ladyhawke, and I’m already completely hooked. Listening to her sing, she sometimes reminds me of the vocal sound of Bananarama and even Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders.
The music throughout this album feels like it’s constantly driving forward with ever-increasingly infectious grooves and power. “Wild Things” is a consistantly brilliant, idiosyncratic album and even though each song is unique, the album has a strong consistency throughout which is tied together by Phillipa Brown’s stunning vocals.
This is what a great album sounds like
The opening song, “A Love Song” pulls no punches. It immediately pulled me into its infectious electro-pop groove and built me up to its big chorus. These huge, unashamed choruses are a staple of this album’s core.
The third song is one of my favourites on the album. “Wild Things”, the titular track, builds up slowly with its ambient electro sounds. Then from out of its electro-atmosphere we can hear a voice rising, singing what will be the album’s chrous. As soon as her voice has risen into coherence we drop into a slower, more reflective sound than has been heard up until now.
Your heartache is not forever
It’s another road that we walk together
And our lives become much stronger
As the world goes on much longer
I wandered far to find the answers
What keeps me alive while taking chancesWhen you’re always almost lonely
You forget to take it slowlyThere’s a fire
“Wild Things” from the album “Wild Things” by Ladyhawke
In the heartland
We dance around it like the wild things in the night
“Chills” burrows its way into that part of the brain that makes you bob you head and tap your feet without realising. As I am writing this along to the song, I realise that I am almost full-on dancing where I sit. God help me when I’m driving home listening to this.
“Golden Girl”, although having lyrics of what I think is about unrequited love, feels like one of the album’s most upbeat-sounding songs.
There’s no way up, there’s no way down
You stole my heart but you throw it around
You give it up then you give it away
Your golden girl waits another day
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Your golden waits another dayThis is the daughter of love running wild
“Golden Girl” from the album “Wild Things” by Ladyhawke
We are the children that play on the other side
But here I am holding cards that will show you
My aching heart’s all too easy to cut through
The album’s closing song, “Dangerous”, is also up there as one of my favourites. Phillipa sings so seductively on the song’s bridge before throwing you into one of the album’s biggest, and definitely my favourite of the album’s, choruses.
This is an album that goes out with a huge bang, and I can’t help but want even more of it once it’s finished.
Underneath it’s spell
The front cover of the album reads “Recorded in spectacular 100% stereophonic sound”. Now I have no idea what that actually means, but I do know that this album does sound 100% spectacular.
Although my thinking of this as an electro-pop album, “Wild Things” has a much more “real band sound” than other electronic albums tend to have – especially the drums. Perhaps that’s part of the whole “stereophonic sound”.
This feels like an album that only comes along every once in a while and is definitely going to remain in my repeated playlist for a long time to come.
This is what a great album sounds like.