Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Time can look you straight in the eyes and without blinking, without ever showing emotion, find a way to unnerve you, show you the colossal state of the Universe and the immensity of it all; then once it has taken you down several pegs it holds your hand, smiles deeply, kisses you on the cheek and allows you another turn around the Sun. It is the kind of benevolence, the deep rooted compassion and underlying Cosmos wake that awaits anyone who wants to seek out beauty in music and who knows they will find it in abundance in The Wonder Stuff.
New albums, latest releases, come and go, it is the nature of the Time that such things are bound to happen. Like Summer must follow Spring and death must renew life, 30 Goes Around The Sun is the tip of an iceberg, the sparkle of a planet’s rings that catch the fire from a exploding star and to which is quite possibly, perhaps a certainty, to be one of the most exciting and dynamic releases by the band; an illuminated spark echoing across Time with a raw majestic power.
It is the rawness that grabs the ear, the anger and the reflection of time, of those 30 years placed within the scheme of the large universal picture and the album storms because of it; it is the type of storm that you are pleased to be caught within, each droplet that crashes upon you, breaking open as if offering new insight to the mechanics of life; it is the storm created by deftness of lyrical delight that The Wonder Stuff, that Miles Hunt, power through with energetic zeal.
Finding the new album in amongst the deserted days of March, of the long shake down of the Winter hold, is to be handed a torch in a coal mine, the riches are there to be seen but without the illumination offered by the band, they would go unnoticed, they would be buried in the seam or the groove. This though is not a seam that will go unharnessed, that will create more and more positive energy each time it is lived through and allowed to express itself.
In songs such as The Kids From The Green, One Day On (So Far Away), In Clover and Last Days Of The Feast The Wonder Stuff show no mercy to Time, as they kick back with gratitude on behalf of us all; it is a fight that most of us would be more than willing to join them in.
30 Goes Around The Sun is a stunning album, one that shakes the heavens to their core.
Ian D. Hall