The Wildes

Imagine if Nick Cave had taken on Steve Earle and The Dukes as his backing band. You’d be a clumsy measure closer to getting the skinny on this roots/country/rock/blues band.

Led by singer Lachlan Bryan, the group has a sound that is refreshingly sparse, but with a real dash of country character in the finely observed lyrics.

There’s something for everyone on this record, whether you like your rock with a touch of folk, or your country rock with the gritty taste of American gothic. Another contender for album of the year, and it’s only August!

Jason Walker

- JB Mag (National)

The Wildes may have won over a lot of fans at Tamworth this year but they will pale into insignificance with the avalanche of fans that their debut album, ‘Ballad Of A Young Married Man’ will attract.

This ain't just a good…it's a great album…in fact one of the best of the year. There is so much to love about this disc that goes far and above what you would normally expect from a country band. There is something Nick Cave-esque about this gem with tracks like ‘Ballad Of A Young Married Man’, ‘Nothing’ and ‘Slap-Back Mary’ sounding like something that might pop up on Cave's own ipod.

Traditional country lovers will enjoy ‘Sweet Teresa’ and ‘Bare Bones’ whilst connosieurs of great songwriting will simply want to listen to ‘Streets Of My Home Town’ and ‘Sue-Ellen’ over and over. Whether calling upon the classic barroom gospel of ‘If I’ve Done Wrong’ or stripping things back to bare roots (like on ‘Loverman’) The Wildes make a strong case to be mentioned amongst Australia’s musical elite.

DAVE GRIFFITHS - MediaSearch.com

Starting off your debut disc with a cheating tune, replete with murder climax when the adulterous narrator takes a bullet in the chest from his widow, is smart marketing. It worked for a plethora of outlaws such as former convict country stars David Allan Coe and the late Johnny Paycheck. But one bullet doesn't make an armoury, although Danny Dill-Marijohn Wilkin tune Long Black Veil tests that theory.

So what else do we have here from a Melbourne quartet, augmented by famed Texan lap steel player Tommy Detamore, fiddler Michael McClintock, producer Jonathan Burnside on mandolin-guitar and upright bassist Steve Hadley? Well, plenty actually. Lead singer and songwriter Lachlan Bryan ensures his narratives are not buried in the drums and guitar grunge of so many peers.

It would appear he subscribes to the stone country college of writers who massage their message without strangling it in tunes such as Jack The Blacksmith - "you burned an effigy and set my soul alight" and ruptured romance of Nothing.

Bryan also masters the art of personalising love songs in the self-deprecation of Sweet Teresa and the surrender to Sue-Ellen, reminiscent of Charlie Robinson.

"I once thought I'd have lots of lovers lining up to get me outta here/ but looks like you're the only one I got/ and that's not bad because you're the best I've ever had." The object of the narrator's affections is trapped in a wheelchair - Robinson's ex-wife Emily was in the Dixie Chicks when he wrote You're Not The Best (But You're The Best I Can Do).

It's not all fear and vittles - the male in Bare Bones is a carnal carnivore bursting the moat of a bucolic belle's boudoir. But in Streets Of My Hometown two country staples - mama and Jesus - are the crutch for a young man trying to escape his tortured past.

The Wildes don't pillage the positive love song tree or emit faux political apologies in regret free If I've Done You Wrong and Lothario fuelled Loverman. They soar in bluesy Slap Back Mary - one of few country songs in recent times about a serial killer who buries her victims on site and takes secrets to the grave in noose standard time. It's fitting the bleak Broken Blossoms is the finale of a disc that blooms on repeating playing.

Deft use of banjo, mandolin, lap steel and dobro by Bryan, drummer Mat Duniam and guitarist Andrew Wrigglesworth give this country soul. Well worth the trip.

- DAVID DAWSON

- Beat Magazine (Melbourne)

With little prior knowledge of the band, and upon only the vague recommendation of a friend, I made my way to The Toff in Town for The Wildes debut album launch.

Acoustic songstress Krista Polvere swaggered onto the stage with her guitar and bearded partner in crime just after 8.30. Her songs were bittersweet alt-country ditties and, despite a mix that was fairly low in volume, she held the already near-capacity venue still and silent for most of her set. Vocally, Polvere reminded me of a young Linda Ronstadt (no bad thing at all) and her manner and dress distinuguished her from the myriad young female singer songwriters doing the rounds. I could see why people like Steve Earle and Ryan Adams (and now The Wildes) had chosen her as a support act.

The room was full by the time The Wildes took the stage (still quite early) and it didn’t take long to realise why. Singer, guitarist and raconteur Lachlan Bryan led his charges through an hour and a bit of gospel tinged folk-country, dripping in southern harmony and western twang. A feel-good vibe prevailed throughout the entirety of the set, despite the band’s pre-occupation with stories of murder, betrayal and extra marital affairs.

Stories were really the order of the night (both during and between songs) though much should be said for the splendid musicianship of the (up to) eight or nine-piece band onstage. Guest singers, a fiddle player and a pedal steel all contributed to a big country sound – the kind you might’ve expected to hear from Gram Parsons and co. circa 1970. The calibre of the songs easily lived up to the sound.

The depth of The Wildes’ catalogue was impressive for an act so new (or at least new to me) and their cover version of The Velvet Underground’s Waiting for My Man was as strong as it was unexpected.

There were few, if any, flat spots in a long set, and the crowd reacted warmly after each song – eventually demanding an encore (which was performed by only a few band members as it seemed the lead guitarist was off-stage being violently ill and others were tending to him). An unusual end to a very memorable evening – and perhaps the end of my aversion to modern country music.

ADAM KRISTIANSEN - Beat Magazine (Melbourne)

Ever since seeing the darkly striking Australian western The Proposition I’ve been fascinated with the similarities between the Land Down Under and the American South and West of the nineteenth century, both good (confronting a wild frontier to achieve independence and establish a society) and bad (attacking and displacing an indigenous people.)

Now due to The Wildes, an Americana/alt.country band from Victoria, Australia, I am now just as fascinated with roots music as interpreted in the land of Oz.

Some of the cuts on Ballad of a Young Married Man take an old-testament page from fellow countryman Nick Cave (and script writer for the aforementioned movie The Proposition). The title song, “Jack the Blacksmith,” “Nothing” and the tribal drum-beat brooder “Slap-Back Mary” could have all come from Cave if was inclined to pen country-hued songs.

The chugging “Streets of My Hometown” carries the DNA of Steve Earle’s Hometown Blues and the sweetly melancholic “Sue-Ellen” sounds like a lost Waterboys cut. “If I’ve Done You Wrong” is a organ backed barroom weeper that basks in its unrepentant spirit and the wonderfully reflective “Loverman” is a rustic beauty. The bonus track Broken Blossoms is a piano and banjo bawler that I imagine could have been penned by that trash can troubadour Tom Waits.

The Wildes cover a wide expanse of Americana dirt roads and wear their influences proudly on their sleeves, but their interpretation on these styles are uniquely their own.

BARON LANE - Twang Nation (USA)

This is a surprising one – seemingly coming out of nowhere, local four-piece, The Wildes, having only been together as a ‘proper band’ for a year or so, have hit the ground running, rolling, bouncing and twisting, releasing a debut worthy of some serious praise. This is country music, but as their presser mentions, this is a notion often passed by and dismissed. But I urge you, don’t make that mistake with Ballad Of A Young Married Man, for this is thinking man’s, story telling country music, the kind that seeps into your bones and stays there, making your feet tap hours after you’ve finished listening.

Case in point, second track, Jack The Blacksmith, a fuzzed out scorcher of a track, as jagged and brutal as it is silken smooth. Vocalist, Lachlan Bryan’s delivery sets the scene – it sounds as if he’s almost not trying, but is doing it so effortlessly it just cuts to the core, while behind him, Andrew Wrigglesworth is slicing and dicing on the ol’ six-string, and you’d better believe this is the real deal. Elsewhere on Ballad…, Sweet Teresa runs as sweet as honey, Bare Bones brings a smile and a dance and If I’ve Done You Wrong… soars with the eagles, showing The Wildes are as capable of rocking your socks off as they are at soothing your savage breast.

Produced by ARIA Award winning producer, Jonathan Burnside, Ballad Of A Young Married Man is a winner to be sure, and the fact (as Bryan mentioned to me in an interview late last year) that none of the band are young married men, well, that just lays testament to their story telling techniques, as this is where the record is at it’s best – in the true folk tradition (and country as well), it’s all about the story telling, and backed with music like this, The Wildes are destined to be telling stories for some time to come.

SAM FELL - Rhythms Magazine (National)

Melbourne band The Wildes are relatively young, as far as bands go, but after little more than a year together they’ve produced an album and summoned a vintage sound to match their old-school storytelling.

Like the gothic country-and western
sound Nick Cave and Warren Ellis mined for the movie soundtrack to The Proposition, The Wildes’ Lachlan Bryan sings of retribution, adultery, murder and love.

Behind him is a sublime countryfolk band (featuring US pedal-steel
star Tommy Detamore) that swings and soars with such deepsouth resonance it’s hard to believe the band is not American.

And that is where The Wildes’ influences obviously lie; Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams are cited as influential along with Wilco and Gram Parsons.

But that gothic-country sound is particularly evident in The Wildes’ Jack the Blacksmith, Slap- Back Mary and the title track Ballad of a Young Married Man (the perfect song with which to open the album), while a distinct Tom Waits sound can be heard in Broken Blossoms.

While listening to country music is akin to torture for some, Ballad of a Young Married Man will come as an epiphany to non-believers.

- CATHERINE GALE - The Hobart Mercury (Tasmania)