I’ve always been a big fan of Ginger Wildheart – the man is a song-writer of the sort of quality that doesn’t come around too often and seems to be as prolific as anyone out there these days. In truth over the last few years I’ve sort of fallen bit out of touch with some of his output and Hey! Hello!’s first 2013 release took a while to filter through and when it did it was brilliant – taking Wildheart-like Rock excess to a pop canvas.
It worked of course and TOO! the second release featuring an array of guest vocals, including Emily Lee, Givvi Flynn, Cat Southall, Laila K, Eloise Kerry, Vicky Jackson and Christina Maynard, as well as performances from band members Ai, Toshi, The Rev and of course Ginger is almost as good but not quite.
ALL AROUND THE WORLD is the perfect start – like a lot of great songs you’ll swear you heard this before – great big pop fun – infectious ball of summer fun. As you can probably imagine it’s relentless – THIS AIN’T LOVE – replete with ‘Mickey’-type drums – and chorus of such fun 80’s pop fun it kicks the life out of latter-day Pop-Rockers like PINK and her ilk, though for me it’s somewhat let down by the quirky intonation in the verses.
If you like it poppier-still then the cover of Sailor’s GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE is cheesy to an almost AQUA-like extent; whilst KIDS is equally quirky it’s a bit more “power pop meets high school musical” and may be too sweet for some palettes. Sometimes though it just doesn’t work and whilst you can still appreciate the idea behind it FOREVER YOUNG with the guitar crunch into pop is really an awful mess and after a while more than a bit annoying.
We’re back on track with the almost ‘MY SHARONA-like guitar that infuses LOUD AND FUCKING CLEAR which really is just Wildheart-like shouty fun; and CAN’T STAND YOU (HURTING ME) a nice poppy driving tune. There’s more fireworks with the Motörhead-like LET’S GET EMOTIONAL and the real punky hard driven lyric chant and red hot riffs break up the lyrics before the poppy chorus are like a fine wine infused with machine oil (particularly satisfying).
We close with the nice pop list of A HISTORY OF LOVERS; the sweet pop in a foreign language of BODY PARTS and the guitar-driven goodtime groove of PERFECT .
A couple of misses but overall well up to Ginger’s own impeccable standards and well worth bothering your neighbours with loudly!
