By Jim Rowland
For those with an interest in punk/post-punk, how does a collaboration between Baz Warne (The Stranglers), Paul Gray (The Damned), Leigh Heggarty (Ruts DC) and Marty Love (Johnny Moped) sound to kick off 2023? Well that’s just what’s on offer here with the debut album from Wingmen, which has a bit of a punk ‘supergroup’ feel to it. But will the end result equal the sum of its parts?
This project, like quite a few others, was born out of the boredom of the Covid lockdown period of 2020/21, when, starved of the ability to play live, The Damned’s Paul Gray and Johnny Moped’s Marty Love recruited Stranglers frontman Baz Warne and Ruts DC guitarist Leigh Heggarty to kick some ideas around remotely and see what evolved. Despite the four members never actually being in the same room at the same time, the result of this remote recording collaboration is one hell of a great album.
Whilst hinting at the influence of each member’s respective bands, as a whole ‘Wingmen’ doesn’t overly sound like any of them, although with Baz Warne handling the vocals if pushed you could say it’s a bit more like contemporary Stranglers than any of the others. With the cracking upbeat instrumental ‘Starting Blocks’ setting the scene, a further nine finely crafted and highly impressive songs follow. The likes of ‘The Last Cigarette’, ‘Brits’, ‘Down In The Hole’ and ‘Backstage At the Opera’ are punchy, catchy and very well written slices punk-tinged pop/rock that, whilst instantly likeable, are the kinds of tracks that will grow on you like a rash.
Lyrically, the album is littered with some pretty hard-hitting politically-charged social commentary, such as the NHS-themed ‘I Would If I Could’, another ultra-catchy ditty, and the Brexit-bashing ‘Oh What A Carry On’, whilst the superb ‘Brits’, my personal favourite, offers a slightly more light-hearted observation on the complaining nature of the British.
‘Wingmen’, then, is very much a sum of its parts, and a whole lot more than a throw-away side project. Although the members recorded the whole thing from separate locations, the Wingmen have now assembled, and if this excellent album is anything to go by, the current ÜK shows should be something to savour. I certainly hope they put some serious thought to a follow-up album.
- ‘Wingmen’ is released next Friday (27 January).
- Wingmen are currently on tour:
The final show, at Brighton’s Concorde 2, will also be streamed live.
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