Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Wig Wam
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2012
Length: 41:55
Rating: 4.5/5
Wig Wam are the Norwegian troublemakers who represented their country at Eurovision in 2005 (it was held in Kyiv – Ukraine) and earned Norway ninth place out of 39 competing countries with the song In My Dreams. Ever since, Wig Wam have lived by the slogan »rocker is the new schlager«, and they serve it very effectively.
“Wall Street” is the band’s fourth studio album. It doesn’t bring a musical revolution or a personal artistic makeover. Instead, Wig Wam stay on the path of Scandinavian glam metal revivalism they’ve laid out for themselves. In fact, they dig deeper into it, showing the great arranging maturity you pick up after years of holding your own in the music business. That’s if you’ve got the right talent and the right feel for approaching music as an art form, of course, and Wig Wam are by no means short on either. The lineup, together since 2001, is made up of seasoned tomcats who got their chops before Wig Wam in local bands like Dream Police, Artch, Sha-Boom, Ole Evenrud and Alien, or tried their luck as solo artists. So? No more hiding for Wig Wam. Not anymore.
Picture a modern take on Kiss-style in-your-face mockery and rock potency, dressed up in the sophisticated arrangements of far better musicians than, say, the former comrades of the legendary The Sweet in the seventies. Simple rhythms, mostly mid-tempo, with a simple but clever open-style riff laid over them, a rattling bassline stomping along on heavy »feet«, greedy hooks in the chorus backed by choir harmonies from a gang of naughty boys, and an explosive lead vocal with that streak of cocky bad-boy arrogance that leads you into temptation. Glam. Party rock! On top of that you add the stage-strutting frills you can’t do without in this kind of situation, and Wig Wam are in the house.
The opening track Wall Street may be the title of a new Eurovision entry in the making, but the rest of the album shows a band maturing artistically. Wig Wam have never served up this much variety on a single album, across a whole set of songs that hold together. We’re talking about songs whose arrangements stand up with all their credibility intact. Already OMG! strays a bit from the grabby, typical glam hard rock rhetoric presented by the opener Wall Street. Then the third one, Victory Is Sweet, underlines the outstanding feel for theatrical melodic catchiness that only a band like Wig Wam can put into a song and build up atmospherically. It’s a track that draws on the melodic ideas of European suite composers from the good old Baroque days, laced with a wicked harmonizing streak built on broken guitar chords that form an effective melodic counterpoint to the vocal. The choir lines in the choruses, which work great in dialogue with the lead vocal, add a dramatic yet majestic feel that runs through the song. It’s one of the best compositions on the album, with an extremely dark yet ceremonially hungry atmosphere.
The Bigger The Better “fixes the impression”, or rather puts things back in their glam party place, as the band gently winds through the traditional moves of Def Leppard (that bouncy chorus), while Try My Body On sets off similar associations for the second time on the album, with a Def Leppard that has been artistically numb for years now. Bleeding Daylight is a perfect “hit maker”. Here the band cashes in on its innate sense for cunningly graduated mood-building, with a crescendo into a great, melodically fully exploited and thoroughly defined “sing along” chorus. It’s a proper anthemic hard rocker, packed with hunger and a neo-classical flavor, its arrangement twisting and turning in true Scandinavian fashion. The pleasant acoustic ballad Tides Will Turn confirms the album’s great variety and dynamic flow, with a melody that owes quite a bit of inspiration to the famous The Beatles/Queen required school reading.
The song that radio frequencies will especially fall for is undoubtedly Wrong Can Feel So Right. The crafty foxes step off the distortion pedal here, work more acoustic polish into the arrangements and serve up a track of pop charm and retro nostalgia. Its opening moves breathe the classic approach to building a top hit single in the vein of The Sweet’s mastery, or even the pop finesse of Steve Miller Band with a veil of blues, which the lead phrase makes no secret of. That the song has an especially greedy chorus hook that works on first listen goes almost without saying.
One Million Enemies? Remember the eighties, when ZZ Top happily fitted their rhythm lines with programmed rhythm patterns and rattled the tops of the charts around the world? Well, Wig Wam don’t go quite that far, but they do add a mischievous keyboard riff to the structure of the song, which in dialogue with the basic rhythm gives the start of the verse that same feel and reveals the band’s sarcastic side. Fun and fully effective! Natural High deepens the band’s sarcastically fun character, feels a touch desperado in the verse, then opens up into a melodic glam sweep in the chorus and delivers another gem to the album that, in its organic-sounding form, could easily land on the rock-friendly frequencies of the radio waves. As many of those as are still free (independent) on this planet, anyway. The band saved the surprise for the end of the album. That’s where you’ll find the acoustic instrumental Things Money Can’t Buy, which feels like the end-credits piece from a film soundtrack. That’s exactly why it sits at the end, since this isn’t something we’re used to hearing from Wig Wam. It’s a great composition with a melancholy note. It’s not exactly the right title for the band’s “party time” character, but still, it shows once again the band’s outstanding knack for creating fiery, tightly packed compositions. Above all, the guitar work in its bravura solos from the true Scandinavian school touches heavenly acrobatics and breakneck speeds. There’s no shortage of dynamite in those fingers, and the guitar neck gets properly scorched. A real dessert to finish.
“Wall Street” is an excellent album! With it, Wig Wam confirm their artistic maturing. The songs are structured optimally. From head to toe. The band has delivered an extremely dynamic album, with wildly varied lead arrangements and moods that ebb and flow. It confirms a remarkable gift for combining lasting punch with a knack for engineering contagious melody. Wig Wam have known this trick since forever. They just keep getting better at it with every passing year.
Line-up
Glam (Åge Sten Nilsen) — vocals
Teeny (Trond Holter) — guitar
Flash (Bernt Jansen) — bass guitar
Sporty (Øystein Andersen) — drums
Production
Wig Wam
Track list
1. Wall Street
2. OMG! (Wish I Had A Gun)
3. Victory Is Sweet
4. The Bigger The Better
5. Bleeding Daylight
6. Tides Will Turn
7. Wrong Can Feel So Right
8. One Million Enemies
9. Try My Body On
10. Natural High
11. Things Money Can’t Buy
