72 is less than 74

Wolfmother released a new album a few days ago. I picked up a copy earlier today at Best Buy (curse them and their sale on video games that I don't have time to play) and gave it a listen.

My main complaint with the album has nothing at all to do with the music itself, but rather with how the album is being sold. I had my choice of two different versions. One version came on a single disc, and included twelve tracks. The deluxe edition came on two discs, and included four additional tracks that were mixed into the track order on disc two.

Making a separate version of an album with extra tracks doesn't bother me too much — I've been willing to forgive other bands for doing it before — but the packaging for the deluxe edition is simply baffling. Instead of a jewel case, you get a folded-up cardboard sleeve that I'm pretty sure is going to rot out within ten years. More irritatingly, the sixteen songs included on the deluxe edition only run for a total of just over 72 minutes. A standard CD can hold 74 minutes of content. There's no justifiable reason to split the album up, unless the band that thought the listener might need a break in the middle.

As far as the music goes, it's good, but perhaps not great. Overall, it sounds like a somewhat improved version of their first album. The new lineup is noticeable, but didn't seem to have any more of an impact on the songwriting than could just as easily be attributed to a few years of musical growth. I didn't notice anything that reached out and grabbed me like the opening of "Joker & the Thief," or the organ licks in "Tales from the Title That Got Cut off in the U.S. Release," but at the same time, I don't recall any of the songs leaving me confused and bored like "Apple Tree" and "Mind's Eye" did on their first album. At this point, the optimal purchasing decision would probably be to get the second album, and then cherry-pick the first album's singles off Amazon's MP3 store or something.

To make up for the fact that all of the songs I mentioned in the above paragraph were on the first Wolfmother album, here are a few that seemed noteworthy on the second: "Sundial," "In the Castle," and "Violence of the Sun."

Oh, and in my opinion, the songs on the deluxe edition are worth the extra cost (packaging aside). They don't have exactly the same sound as the rest of the album, but that's a good thing in my opinion, since the whole thing would've gotten stale otherwise. "Back Round" is one of the band's better swing-time extra-hard rock tracks, which actually says quite a bit, given that such songs appear to be their specialty. "Eyes Open" steps over the line between hard rock and metal just a bit, and makes rest of the album better for doing so. "Caroline" provides a welcome break with some less-hard rock. "Cosmonaut" is, um, kind of okay, but three out of four seems good enough to me.