FRICTION NYC

Last night some of the CU crew was part of a very packed house at Northsix for Wolfmother’s first of two NYC shows. They’ll be blaring their Aussie rock to a sold-out Mercury Lounge tonight. This young band out of Sydney Australia is just coming off their first full-length, self-titled album. They lit up SXSW last year and created a buzz around their EP, Dimensions.

Many critics lay comparisons to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, which is undeniable. And this goes beyond the 70s rock power chords, as if frontman Andrew Stockdale channels a young Robert Plant. On Dimensions, the marching drums, reminiscent of Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, beat up to the chorus line, “Into another dimension” leading to the psychedelic 70s voice-reverb, “Purple haze is in the sky / see the angels with dead eyes”.

Being weaned on classic rock radio stations of the Mid-west, I was ready for the similarities, if not blatant rip-offs. But when Wolfmother took the stage, and with Stockdale’s high-energy, afro-banging, skinny-limbs-flailing-about presence, I forgot about the unoriginality. The Australian trio was tight, each engaging the crowd in their own way, like Stockdale shooting his power chords from the hip while leaning into the crowd and bassist/keyboardist Chris Ross pulling the keyboard back and forth like a pendulum.

Last night was a fury of energy and in a New York minute we were cheering for the encore; short, sweet and damn-good fun. So join the rest of us and don’t be afraid to “get the Led out” (enter deep, over-exaggerated radio voice here).

More photos on CU’s Flickr site.