My introduction to Wicketkeeper was the video for magnificent fifth single 'The Side' (an excellent place to start with this excellent band). Soundtracked by the song's spry guitar work and irrepressible vocal hooks – both of which are Wicketkeeper staples – my eye wandered to the comments section where the band themselves had given a reply. In response to a self-congratulatory observation of what may or may not have been a bum note, Wicketkeeper simply replied "if that bothers you, you're going to struggle with the album", unwittingly writing the perfect review for their debut album Shonk.
Much is made of the London/Margate trio's instrument-swapping tendencies, born of the fact that when the band originally came into being in a North London practice room three years ago neither brothers Simon and Alex Morley nor friend Ryan Oxley could play the drums – if ever a record is the sound of a band finding themselves, Shonk is surely it. This is 'finding themselves' not in the sense of a six-month mountain retreat to be at one with their innermost thoughts and feelings, though, with Oxley explaining that the only criteria was that the music they made "had to make us smile".
And when a band is having fun, it makes it so much easier for the listener to have a good time, and there are basically no downsides to Shonk, the 14-song distillation of some 50 tracks thrown together over the last few years. There are nods to mid-noughties indie rock on 'Night Night', which channels the lager-fuelled guitar bashing of the Arctic Monkeys' debut album and all that came in its wake, and to late-nineties fuzz on 'Feeling'. When the energy drops, as on 'Modest Breakfast', skilful vocal melodies come to the fore and 'Over and Over' could be a Strokes b-side – or at least a Strokes covers band b-side – with Morley (Simon) channelling his inner Julian Casablancas, vocally at least.
But where that particular group of New Yorkers were
painfully, achingly cool and knew it, Wicketkeeper revel in their unreconstructed
dedication to just having fun. A cliché it may be, but the music is free and
easy, rough round the edges indie rock with a real DIY charm. And after all,
isn't that the coolest you can get?
Words - Joe Ponting
Wicketkeeper Facebook