Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Wirral based group Crooked Wolf may have only been performing together for around a year but as they bask in the sunlight in The Ship Inn as part of the Oxjam event in Hoylake, the stirrings of something great has grown teeth and chewed its way through the past.

Following on from the example set earlier in the afternoon by Kenny & The Energy, if you are going to perform cover version perform them with a sense of style, a passion to turn those older and much loved gems into something new, a new layer of flesh on a battered and much loved carcass. This is something that Crooked Wolf have managed with great affection to do, even taken on songs that could be considered the musical equivalent of the sacred and untouchable.

Any music lover can find themselves in any venue up and down the country and see young groups performing a set completely comprised of covers from the last 10 years. There is so much wrong with this world that to rely as a 15-16 year old on playing songs by whatever passed for generic blandness during that time seems a waste, a tragic waste not get your own voice heard and rage against the world. The covers they bring to their audience don’t inspire and seem to be played in the same melodic and most heinously safe.

Take the opposite view; show an audience as young band what can be achieved if you spice up the music, turn it on its head and give a riveting performance from songs that in most cases are older than any of the members and it becomes interesting, a musical tour de force that is not burnt out before it begins.

In Crooked Wolf, fronted by the fantastic presence of Steffi Wulf, a darker Wendy James like figure and  a University of Liverpool graduate and wonderfully assisted by Josh Sinclair on bass, the excellent powerhouse of Jamie Clague on guitar and Chris Davies on drums, this polar opposite view of capturing songs with a snarling ferocity, an attitude of turning tracks such as Free’s Wishing Well, Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog and Heartbreak Hotel and the Lee Hazelwood written and  Nancy Sinatra’s opus These Boots Were Made For Walkin’  into platinum. Nothing can ever replace those old gems created by the elder icons of a different age but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be challenged and given new meaning. In Crooked Wolf, The Wirral has a group that is unafraid to take on the icons and give a biting and strong tasting account of what’s to come.

The season of the wolf is at hand and it is a gift.       

Ian D. Hall