The Wild Eyes

The Wild Eyes have remained somewhat underground since their formation, stepping blinking into the light of the city’s venues. The beautiful noice summoned up by this three piece continues in the pop/psych/prog territory explored by the Velvet Underground, the legendary 1960s garage rock compilation Nuggets and My Bloody Valentine.
Straddling the divide between pop and psychedelia with consummate ease, the trio are capable of delivering three to four minute pop gems reminiscent of MBV and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Sprawling Mogwai/Spacemen 3 influenced soundscapes which appear to only last a couple of minutes are also dispatched with aplomb, with tunes remaining intact on both counts. The troika have existed under different guises for several years and have hammered out a vast sound that pays heed to their source material without being overwhelmed by it.
On the melody front the trio can rein things in perfectly, wringing an incredible amount of motif out of the fewest number of chords possible, a fixation they share with 1965 era Beatles. Somehow retro and futuristic at the same time, the only conclusion to draw is that they sound a lot like the sound of well, now. Go see.
- Bido Lito!

One of the strangest sights had to be the Wild Eyes, whose mad, twisted style of music caught me by surprise.
The word 'psychedelic' gets used quite a lot by pretentious hipsters trying to label bands, but these certainly deserved that epitaph, with an exciting and wild performance that, well, lived up to their name. - Liverpool Daily Post

Retro-futurists The Wild Eyes’ psych-pop is beginning to build up a sizable buzz around the city. With psychedelia an element that has been unfortunately overlooked in rock music of late, the trio’s re-appropriation of the form for the twenty-first century is to be applauded. Inspired by the legendary Nuggets compilation of underground US bands, The Who’s aggressive surrealism and Revolver period Beatles, early nineties sonic adventurers My Bloody Valentine and The Verve are also sourced.

Able to handle lengthy blissed out explorations in sound, the trio are equally capable of reigning things in to deliver spiky pop songs that clock in around the three minute mark. Wringing the maximum amount possible out of simple riffs and chord progressions the massive-yet-minimal approach is imbued with new life in the hands of the three-piece. Unsigned at the present time, an ever-expanding live following and positive press locally will surely rectify the situation and launch them onto bigger stages soon.
- Bearded Magazine

There has always been a tradition of creativity in this city. And, as well as producing talent, we’re more than happy to harbour creative strangers and nurture them, taking them under our wing and helping them flourish.
The Wild Eyes are such strangers but they’re welcome to stay as long as they like.
The band consists of Huw Roberts (vocals, guitar), Sam Gill (drums) and Neal Johnson (bass). Growing up in small towns and in the throes of Britpop, Huw and Sam bonded at school, buying singles from Our Price and salivating over the recent copy of NME, it was an exciting time to be young and enthusiastic about music. Neal met Huw later, sparking a connection with a shared love of early Verve. It is this deep connection through music that has interwoven through the history of the band. After stints at Universities, the trio again came together and formed the band (then a four piece).
Describing themselves as ‘rock and roll weirdos’, we’re prone to agree with them. The thing that has become ‘weird’ in the current music industry are bands with little history before they are signed or put out a single; most new bands never play gigs to a handful of people on Monday nights, they never have to think about learning to win audiences over with a sound that speaks for itself. Maybe the Wild Eyes are weird, but for all of the right reasons.
The band may be a familiar name to Liverpool gig goers, and have been for a number of years. Most bands would try to hide this fact, paint it out of their history and reinvent themselves as a fresh new act; but in this case, that really is not necessary. The trio are quite happy in their own skin, as Huw says, ‘We’re proud of the fact that we’ve developed. You know, it’s rare for anything to arrive fully formed’.
‘One of our first gigs was at Bar Ca Va, we started the first song and I immediately broke a string. I threw the guitar down and that’s when the performer in me came out. I didn’t have anything to hide behind and just sort of exploded with energy. All of the movement and attack I’d typically put into playing needed to come out and just got channelled at the audience. I think the others were taken aback. Something was born then perhaps…’.
Huw has all of the makings of a showman; softly spoken and articulate, yet when he looks across the crowd from behind a mic stand, he comes alive; he struts, he talks with his hands, he has your attention, and the music pulsates through his words and out into the room, creating an atmosphere all its own. This did not go unnoticed at Liverpool Music Week in 2010, which earned the band some rave reviews and a lot of local media exposure.
Their sound is psychedelic garage, a template that has changed a little over the years yet still remains true to the group. Sam began life in the band as a guitarist, yet as time passed by and drummers came and went, he found a home behind the kit. Holed up in their rehearsal room, they created a brand new set of songs – songs that would bring them to the forefront of a new scene emerging in Liverpool.
‘We had an old kit down at the practice room that we would use to help us writing tracks. Over time Sam started to bang away on it more and more, and a set of songs developed on which he just played drums’, says Huw. This new set up seemed to bring in a wave of much needed luck for the trio, and has rolled on ever since, seeing them build up a following and a lot of admiration from fellow musicians.
Their new set comprises songs such as ‘Kosmos’ which is like a seductive lover, an ethereal tune calling you into the realm of Heaven, tinged with specks of darkness; floating back down from your cloud, ‘Sweet Teardrops’ and ‘I Look Good on You’ slap you hard in the face and take you roughly by the collar- dragging you around the back streets of a town seething with sleazy riffs, whilst ‘On the Shore’ never fails to transport the listener to a midnight river, glistening in the moonlight.
2011 is set to be a busy year for the trio, with a 7’ single in the pipeline, and tour of Liverpool booked for the coming months, we’d advise at least one dose of The Wild Eyes this spring, if not two, just to fill any space you may have in your heart for a new favourite band.
- SevenStreet.com

In the subterranean gig parlour of The Shipping Forecast, The Wild Eyes’ set rumbles into life.

With an earth-shaking bass sound high in the mix, the trio sound remarkably full. In particularly sharp and aggressive sounding form this evening, garage/psych rock crossbreed ‘Sweet Teardrops’ tumbles from the amps, markedly more vicious than on record.

Unusually effusive between songs, lead singer Huw states “the other bands on the bill are quite forward looking, we’re the cavemen of the evening,” before launching into a primal thud that morphs beautifully into a mesmerizing rendition of ‘How Does it Feel (To Feel?)’ With the crowd increasing as the band progress, the trio lurch through bare-bones rock epiphanies like Link Wray spliced with The Stones’ mid sixties swagger.

Giving Huw the opportunity to indulge in several guitar wig-outs, bassist Neal underpins the riffs, whilst drummer Sam proceeds with the minimum amount of fuss, nailing the beat firmly to the floor. Concluding with ‘Kosmos’ the rhythm section providing the slow-burn lead in, the track opens up with the entrance of the guitar and softly-spoken vocal incantation. Building into a swirling psychedelic mass, the three band members seem far bigger than the sum of their parts, the vastness of the sound as though they have extra musicians hidden somewhere offstage.
The set concluded with another score of converts won over to the cause, The Wild Eyes’ journey to the furthest reaches of space-rock whilst mindfully keeping the tunes intact continues in stunning fashion.
- Purple Revolver

Adding to Fuel for Fire's rather fine opening night of gigging promotions in Liverpool are The Wild Eyes.
The now wavers have been on the tip of many a tongue in recent months and it's easy to spot why - they know their way around a melody and in Huw Roberts have a frontman who's burning so brightly you'd imagine Jeniferever would run out of piss should they attempt to stem his flames.
He deals in visceral vocal bite, a tempered aggro-front specialising in jarring neck stabs and attacks his guitar with deliberate purpose recalling, no less, a young Weller.
And if that's not visually arresting enough, they've Mickey Pearce - or Neal Johnson to his friends, on bass.
- Liverpool Echo