Ginger Wildheart's new album is a compilation of the best of the songs that he either recorded or extracted from his vaults. To be a part of the Ginger Associated Secret Society meant taking out a fanclub subscription service for hardcore Ginger nuts who then received a 3 track EP every month for a year. This album compiles Ginger's 12 favourite tracks out of the 36 the fans received.
It opens with Down The Dip: a rip roaring punk pop roar that sounds like a typical Wildhearts song and is pretty cool for an adrenaline fuelled tune (with a good quiet bit in the middle) as they get ready to blast away towards the end as we take a trip Down the Dip.
The big guest slot is on Honour: a duet with Courtney Love who sounds less raw and more of a singer on this than she often does on her own material. The song is propelled by a cool bass line and ends up sounding not unlike the songs Ginger wrote with Michael Monroe a few years ago. A good slice of Punky metal pop.
El Mundo (Slow Fatigue) slows things down a touch and adds some brass in the background before it gets rather over indulgent in the middle and falls away into a cool song but it still feels like he's layered two or three song ideas into the one song. To my ears it could do with being stripped back a little.
The Last Day Of Summer is a cool slice of power pop that feels gloriously sunny as you'd hope it would. That's followed by my favourite song on this album Only Henry Rollins Can Save Us which seems to be based around an incident when Ginger tried to collaborate with Henry. It's full of intense lyrics and asking a few questions of Henry and explaining how Henry didn't want to be on a track called What Would Henry Rollins Do. It's wry and cool and well worth hearing.
The Pendine Incident is a story song about an incident up north so to speak. It features some interesting folk influences mixed into the normal urgent adrenal power punk with some very cool fiddle playing on it. Do You ever think about Suicide is the main question of Do You, but it's all wrapped up in a good rock song that wouldn't sound out of place on day time radio.
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If You Find Yourself In London Town opens like it could be a folk song before the strings and beats start to come in, adding an ambient edge to it. Unlike most of the album, it almost ends up sounding like a cross between the Waterboys and Ultramarine which is an odd combination that Ginger manages to pull off pretty well.
Toxins & Tea sounds like Ginger has re-worked Stop The Cavalry by Jonah Lewie and taken it somewhere else to ask questions about the state of our society and the problems we all face. It's pretty effective and cool. No One Smiled At Me Today sounds like a normal Wildhearts song with some nice wry lyrics.
Ostracide seems to be about being cast out into the outer darkness by an ex in Ginger's normal power punk style with some cool odd noises going on at times. The album closes with the epic Don't Lose Your Tail, Girl That starts off like a Beatles-influenced pop song before mutating into some sort of god awful club banger gone wrong with strange banging techno bits and odd noises. It's the one song where I was tempted to hit the fast forward button and as it goes on for over 9 minutes it ends up feeling like a bit if an ordeal even when the power pop resumes. It's just too unwieldy and not a great way to finish an otherwise pretty cool album of odds and sods.
This album may well encourage some of you to join up to Ginger Wildheart Fan Club online to get the other 24 songs missing from this compilation.
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