Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
If we are fortunate, we are open minded enough to give both the heart and the head equal presence when making the crucial decisions which govern our future happiness and of those who we surround ourselves with. The situation becomes less clear, shrouded in the fine whisper of dusk when the conflict of emotions means we find the soul and the name of our fortune changing, the head may agree and acknowledge the truth of such persuasive argument, but sometimes The Heart Won’t Listen, entrenched rightly in the jaws of the wolf to whom sentiment and longing are important factors.
A flower retains its beauty even when placed in between the pages of a chronicle of the times, a name might change and the heart might initially rebel at the thought, and yet as the open-mind wins through, the listener, the person to whom Bad Flowers was a sincere joy, can find a new and exciting reason to love what springs forth.
The change of name, from The Bad Flowers to Wolf Jaw, driven by sound and revelling still in the excellence of the 2018 release of Starting Gun, has not deterred the sense of purity that comes through in the renamed band and The Heart Won’t Listen suddenly becomes one that opens up and reflects in the conversation that is wanting, needing, to happen.
Tracks such as Ticking Time Bomb, The Fighter, Pieces Of Me, Choke and I Lose My Mind refuse to be distilled and be cowed down by the past, after all we can do nothing about what has once been, instead we must throw all the caution possible to the wind and see that change is possible, indeed it should obligatory to experience variation that will push you further on, encourage you, even if the heart resists, to become what the mind insists you are.
A heavier sound, one born from a darker place perhaps, but no less thrilling, The Bad Flowers may have given off a heavenly scent, but in Wolf Jaw there is a tight, form grip on the realities of the day; a knock-out performance captured in full.
Wolf Jaw release The Heart Won’t Listen on October 25th via Listenable Records.
Ian D. Hall