CD: Wolf People - Ruins

At 15 seconds in, it becomes obvious Ruins means business. A brief snatch of acoustic guitar lays the table for a hard-edged, groove-driven slab of melodic guitar psych immediately bringing to mind the heavier moments of Sun Dial’s classic 1990 album Other Way Out. Dungen (and their flute) are in there too. As are Kak’s “Trieulogy” and a hefty dose of vintage Swedish progg.

These touchstones make it overwhelmingly clear that the Bedfordshire-formed Wolf People are aiming high on their third album proper. Where its predecessors were a little ragged, unfocused and seemingly born from jamming, Ruins is diamond-hard: the wah-wah flurry delineating the last 45 seconds of second track “Rhine Sagas” lays this on the line. With a new sense of swing to Tom Watt’s drums and every song imbued with a hummable melody, the album is a loose concept piece on nature's reclamation of the landscape – resulting in the ruins of the title. The core song is “Kingfisher” which, over its seven minutes, evokes the marriage of the Fairport Convention of Unhalfbricking’s “A Sailor’s Life” to Television’s “Friction”.

If that weren’t enough and should the case need to be further made, head for “Night Witch”, which takes its title from the World War Two female Soviet aviators who harried Nazi forces. Never has pastoral psychedelia sounded this heavy, this textured yet this elegant. That said, “Thistles” is bloody hot too. Ruins is Wolf People’s apotheosis.

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