Just as the Wonder Stuff never loved Elvis, I never really loved the Wonder Stuff. That said, their 1988 debut, ‘The Eight-Legged Groove Machine’ still stands as a corking, spirited statement of bratty, cocky indie, and I recognise the fact that there was a time when a new Wonder Stuff album would have put the band on the cover of all of the weekly music papers. How times change. Now, there aren’t even any weekly music papers to put bands on the covers of.
There’s a question around why some bands careers endure, and others’ don’t so much. Miles Hunt has been doing ok on the gig circuit in recent years, but we’re talking relatively small-capacity venues. Is it a case of overexposure, too many years spent trading on the glory days of a band who once packed out stadiums, or simply reducing interest and shifting musical allegiances? Obviously, the lippy front-man has proven divisive both in terms of audience and the actual band, but you have to have some sympathy for a band who have lost half of their original members to premature death.
There was a time when I absolutely detested The Wonder Stuff, and not just because I was a jaundiced goth. I loathed their chipper, chirpy demeanour, and more than anything, I despised their alt-trendy fans, the hip chicks in their cherry-red DMs reeking of Body Shop, the middle-class college kids dossing about and smoking roll-ups sitting cross-legged on pub floors like every day is Glastonbury. Where are these fickle fuckers now?
It seems perverse that in a world where turgid second-division acts like Shed Seven and Bluetones are being fervently received on the reunion / nostalgia circuit, anticipation for the Stuffies’ eighth album seems somewhat muted – so muted, in fact, that their seventh, 2012’s ‘Oh No It’s... The Wonder Stuff'’ completely bypassed me. As, indeed, did its predecessors, ‘Suspended by Stars’ (2006) and ‘Escape from Rubbish Island’ (2004).
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For all that, they’re still here, at least in name, 30 years after becoming an entity, and of course, tickets for the upcoming tour are selling like hot cakes. It’s all about yesterday. The kids of the 90s just can’t let go, but have no interest in the present or the future.
With Hunt the sole remaining founder member, you have to ask just how much this is really The Wonder Stuff, and how much it’s the singer masquerading under the guise of the band, and that’s perhaps something the fans are best equipped to answer.
For what it’s worth, ‘30 Times Around the Sun’ isn’t a bad album by any stretch: it’s lively, energetic, bouncy. And it’s bursting with fiddle-filled indie stompers. But there’s a lack of really standout tracks. ‘Size of a Cow’ may have been irritating, but it was catchy. There’s no ‘Caught in My Shadow’ or It’s Yer Money I’m After, Baby’; nothing that grabs the listener like ‘Welcome to the Cheap Seats’ or ‘Don’t Let Me Down, Gently’. Obviously, it’s not about chart success any more, but The Wonder Stuff were, undeniably, a strong singles band. And there’s nothing that says ‘strong single’ or has the hallmarks of the hits of the band’s golden years. And without that, it’s just another fiddle-heavy indie album.
The Wonder Stuff Online
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