DEWOLFF will release their brand-new album Love, Death & In Between on 3 February via Mascot Records / Mascot Label Group.
They band have also revealed the video for their new song ‘Heart Stopping Kinda Show’ and announced a special show at 100 Club, London on Thursday 2nd March 2023. Tickets are available from their site at www.dewolff.nu
DeWolff have proved over-and-over again that they are a cut above the rest. They’re vagabonds that have somehow escaped from a different epoch… they travelled from a (better) time: they come from a place where love is the dominant force and psychedelic dance halls are a swirl of living colour.
DeWolff are not a band to sit still. They thrive on constant motion. They have put out five albums in the past four years, with Wolffpack from 2021 becoming their highest charting album. It peaked at #2 in their home country of the Netherlands and came in just behind Foo Fighters for the top spot.
We have described their intoxicating concoctions as: “voodoo pain and sweet, slow release…”
They visited Kerwax, an analogue studio located in the Brittany village of Loguivy-Plougras, northwest France, in May 2022. They took a two-week retreat in this residential studio-cum-museuum, and made use of the historic recording gear they found, some of it dating to the 1940s -including a vacuum tube mixing console, vintage tape machines, tube compressors, and catalogable instruments.
Brothers Pablo (guitar/vocals), Luka van de Poel (drums/vocals), and Robin Piso (Hammond/Wurlitzer) were joined by a large group of friends for their Kerwax recordings, which were done live on tape, with no overdubs. “We brought extra people and wanted their signature on it. Playing with ten people in one room is chaotic. Every take you do, somebody is not satisfied with how they play. But you realise what is important about a take.”
The album was entirely produced without the use of computers, and everything was recorded purely analogically and directly to tape. The tapes were subsequently forwarded to a mastering engineer, who cut them directly to a lacquer that was utilised for vinyl pressing. Even this mastering and final cut was carried out in analogue.
The subjects on the album were influenced by works of American authors from the 20th century, particularly John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat: “There is a quote from him, ‘The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer’s own experience,’ and that was something [we] really wanted to do with lyrics on this record.”
The band was also heavily influenced by gospel artists like The Soul Stirrers, Al Green, and early songs by The Staple Singers, as well as classic R&B and soul artists like Little Richard, Sam Cooke, The Coasters, The Clovers, and The Impressions.
Thus, the wistful sixties-soul nostfest Heart Stopping Kinda Show (video shared below) has great slurps of greasy organ, a glorious slumgullion of Funk Brothers style brass, and a rhythmic melodic songshape that continues to be imperative without wever sounding wantsome.
semi-rustic slide guitar, ramshackly rhythms, Deep Purplish organ swirls, and lots of virtuosity…
Raw Ramp Music Magazine
Night Train is a hot pants and shimmering go-go dancing number, with the same type of abundant anklet-shimmering gleefulness you’d expect from the cigarette girls in their white boots, down on Sunset Strip, circa summer ‘66. But it’s also an express rattler of a rock song with lots of lusty soul that blows in gales through the bellows.
Counterfeit Love is a bit more bluesy (if that’s what you’re searching for) with semi-rustic slide guitar, ramshackly rhythms, Deep Purplish organ swirls, and lots of virtuosity… yes, this number deserves to sit alongside any of the tracks on The Book of Taliesyn
So Dewolff’s Love, Death & In Between is a soul-jam rock album in the same category as perhaps you’d place Fresh Cream though it comes flavoured by the passionary eagerness of Billy Joe Royal. So expect slightly psychedelic, slightly prog-soul, and slightly hard… rock! If you’ve ever wondered what the Black Crowes would have sounded like if they had been picked up by Arthur Lee, packaged like Iron Butterfly and then promoted in L.A. alongside Rhinoceros, we guess DeWolff is what you’d achieve!
File alongside: Vanilla Fudge
Words: @neilmach 2023 ©
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