Superwolves

Album review

It's been 16 years since Matt Sweeney and Will Oldham aka Bonnie ‘Prince" Billy teamed up for an album's worth of material, and, now that our indie rock heroes are firmly ensconced in their middle age, one would assume that Superwolves would somehow reflect some epiphanic segue into elder-statesmanhood. However, what we actually have are a couple of dudes in their early ‘50s, straining against their instinctive desire to make a dad-rock album. Between Sweeney's love of top-tier riffs and Oldham's renowned gift for American Gothic songcraft, these two each could easily provide the necessary ingredients for an indie-adjacent classic rock record, and many of the melodies and lyrics point toward that possibility, but structurally, Sweeney's spare guitar work and Oldham's literary-minded lyrical distance doesn't let it happen. Most of the numbers—whether the The Gosdin Brothers' "There Must Be a Someone" (one of only two tracks not written by Sweeney and Oldham) or the sing-songy (but terribly sad) "You Can Regret What You Have Done"—are spare and relatively simple, putting the lyrics at the fore. That said, Superwolves does manage to get a bit crunchy, thanks to the presence of Mdou Moctar's band on three songs near the end of the album's first half. "Hall of Death" is a dizzyingly intense and emotionally effective number, spinning out Rush-in-West-Africa vibes boosted by Moctar"s guitar work. When the record veers toward splitting the difference, it's both enticing and frustrating. "God is Waiting" aches for a couple of chunky bar chords and some lush arrangements, but the closest we get are some briefly multitracked harmonies in an otherwise sparse and slightly abstract arrangement; likewise, album closer "Not Fooling" feels like an epic held in second gear, with both Sweeney and Oldham worried that there's some sort of inherent bombast that could escape from the song's restrained and introspective grasp. So there's definitely still a classic, dad-rock album in here somewhere for these two; we may just have to wait until they get into their 60s until we can hear it. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz