Four stars for The Woodies’ debut album
Some singers, like Nick Lowe and Graham Parker, have the knack of reformatting the punk sneer and growl into something that perfectly fits the roots-rock template of their music. Bill Wood shares this talent. Oh Look …, the debut album from Bill Wood and the Woodies, is an honest and direct look at the complexities of life and at how easily we can all, Bill included, mess it up.
Opening track ‘Push Ahead’ doesn’t shy away from the singer’s battles with addiction, but encapsulates it in a celebratory paean to the spirit of keeping going whatever life throws at you: ‘I’m not looking for a shred of your pity/I made my own way and I know this city’.
In ‘Monster’, much like Lowe’s ‘The Beast In Me’, we are asked to ‘love the monster in me’ because he doesn’t think he ‘can change yet’.
This is music where the song matters: arrangements put the song first before the egos of individual players; not that the playing is ever less than spot-on.
Think the tunefulness and fury of Weddings Parties Anything at their peak matched with honest and direct lyrics eschewing any trace of self-pity.