Wolfstone - Year of the Dog

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Free Music Notes for Year of the Dog

Free Music Review: Yikes.
Hit: 2 Stars

What's wrong with it? PLENTY. The most distressing thing to me, hands down were the terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE lyrics. I'm not an English major or anything, but I think we can all agree that a synthesizer driven song about the KKK ("white gown") seems extremely out of place and completely inappropriate (and the final results are disasterous).

The guitar is mainly put in to give it that "rock" sound that they were supposed to have, but fell short of for this album. These guys need to lose their producer, it's too slick. . .they'd sound better if I recorded them in my room with my 4-track; less cheesy at any rate.

To sum up: Wolfstone's instrumental work is vastly superior to the songs where that creepy looking guy sings (exceptions being a few songs on unleashed and the chase), and this is especially true of this album.

Year of the Dog Poster

Silly Wizard's Phil Cunningham, who produced the album and added some accordion, helped Wolfstone retain the springy lilt of Celtic dance music even as they added more power to their punch. Unfortunately, the impact of this hybrid sound is at times blunted by the overreaching songwriting of singer Ivan Drever and fiddler Dave Chisholm, who too often adopt the unfocused bombast of such prog-rock bands as Yes and Jethro Tull. On Drever's rousing political anthem, "The Brave Foot Soldiers," however, and on Cunningham's lively instrumental medley, "The Double Rise," Wolfstone display the potential to cross over from folk to pop--and back again. --Geoffrey Himes

Folk Music CDs

• World Music
• Rock
• Pop