Wild Young Hearts

Product Details

How’s this for a reinvention: Wild Young Hearts debuts a very different Noisettes from the band we met on 2007’s punky What’s The Time Mr Wolf? Primarily, the London trio have realised what a voice they have in vocalist Shingai Shoniwa, whose smoky croon resembles a young Billie Holliday, and frankly, feels a little wasted on ragged garage-rock numbers. If Wild Young Hearts is a slightly more mainstream-sounding offering than its predecessor, though, it also wears its new sense of ambition on its sleeve. Most new listeners will have been pulled in by “Don’t Upset The Rhythm”, a smart disco-pop number with shades of Tom Tom Club’s “Wordy Rappinghood”, but there’s a good half-dozen tracks here that would make equally good singles: take the pulsing electro of “Saturday Night”, or “Never Forget You”, a Winehouse-style soul number with added crunchy guitar. If there’s a problem here, it’s that the Noisettes are so keen to show they can do anything, they’re sometimes in danger of overloading their songs: the title track, with its rocky peaks, elegiac piano, and frantic handclaps, feels like about three tracks crushed uncomfortably into one. Still, Wild Young Hearts sounds like a band with the talent to carry off their big ideas, and a band that’s increasingly playing to their strengths. --Louis Pattison