Wolf Colonel

While Wolf Colonel (an alias for Jason Anderson) might resent the fact that every single review that gets written about them compares them to Guided By Voices, they sure as hell don't do anything to help the matter by opening their latest album, Something/Everything!, with a song like "Astronaut, Astronaut." In saying that, this is probably their best and most eclectic album to date, and after that initial burst of GBV-like behaviour, they spend the next 35 minutes unable to decide what they want to sound like. An eclectic album could also just mask the fact that Anderson had a bunch of songs that didn't really go together but he wanted to release, although I'd prefer to think he was expanding his horizons as an artist. By the fourth track, "Break The News," Anderson is cranking up his amp until it distorts and then on track six, "Citizen's Arrest," he's got his hands on some keyboards and has a drum machine running amok. Then there are the acoustic strums, slow-building band numbers and so on. It is almost like he is deliberately trying to keep listeners on their toes, bypassing possible complacency. That said, Wolf Colonel are at their best when they are writing those two-minute pop gems and sounding pretty close to GBV. That's not a bad thing though, because there will always be room in the world for two-minute pop gems.