West Coast Wolves’ debut Don’t Forget to Howl brilliantly rides the wave of sonic exploration – Texx and the City

When West Coast Wolves start writing without notions of genre and a wide range of influences that make up the band’s life-blood it culminates in Don’t Forget to Howl, an almighty debut album.

The band’s ethos, “music, surf, jol”, paints a picture of lazy days and crazy nights. It conjures up images of a lifestyle where nothing gets taken too seriously but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Under this happy-go-lucky, fun-loving guise lies an album unafraid to go to darker, more questioning places. It decries the isolating nature of social media and bemoans grey city walls, it questions war and delicately embraces parental anxiety.

And it does so with breathtaking energy and a thrilling approach to genre. There’s no single defining sound as styles that usually have little right to share the same spotlight co-exist in surprising harmony.

Find me another album where the breakneck punk, heavy like metal, of “Crows Foot” precedes the jumpy reggae of “Invisible Walls” and archetypal country of “Dear Rollercoaster”, all with the masterful hand of a band that knows what it’s doing.

For all the glorious genre-fuckery, though, there’s one thing, one instrument, that ties the whole thing together – the banjo. It was through serendipity’s cunning that guitarist Pete Gray ended up with a banjo-guitar (six stringed and tuned like a guitar) in his hands.

A few years ago the Wolves were asked to be part of a documentary/ode to the West Coast and its infinite wildness and freedom, and to write a song specifically for the film. Said banjo-guitar struck a chord (pun intended) with the band and took over a part initially meant for a guitar in a song that would become a prototype of the band’s sound called “Uncle Tin” (whose video serves as the perfect demonstration of the ‘jol’ part of the band’s ethos).

Fast forward to the present day and the instrument plays a pivotal role in propelling Don’t Forget to Howl from great to brilliant. The first shining example is the rambunctious rage against instant-gratification culture that is “Crows Foot” where the banjo’s penchant for madness gives the song the licence to run wild and free. 

In the intro, which it shares with a stubborn kick-drum, it sets a frenetic pace for the other instruments to keep up with so that when the electric guitar joins the party it’s with the force of a dam wall bursting suddenly and explosively. Though the banjo only features in instrumental breaks its influence rides on through verse and chorus alike.

On the other end of the spectrum you have “Knuckles Tight”, by far the most sombre song on the record. Through an act of musical sorcery that I have yet to understand despite listening to the song more times than I can count, the banjo sheds its red-neck stereotype and replaces it with something more tactful and mature. There’s a profound humility in the way it, for the most part, settles into the background of the arrangement. It’s a rhythmic embellishment that wouldn’t be missed were it not there but whose inclusion is the perfect top-note to the intense, helpless anxiety of the verses.
Perhaps it’s fate or perhaps just good musicianship but there’s something magical in the way West Coast Wolves have taken the banjo out of its comfort zone and so brilliantly worked it into such a diverse range of sounds. That’s not to say Don’t Forget to Howl is as good as it is solely because of the banjo, it would have been excellent without it, but its inclusion allows the album to go places that might not have been accessible otherwise.