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Album Review

The Real Tuesday Weld
Songs for The Last Werewolf Crammed Discs

Article written by Ged M - Nov 23, 2011

The Real Tuesday Weld: Songs for The Last Werewolf

Like I, Lucifer before it, The Last Werewolf is inspired by a novel by Mancunian author Glen Duncan who stated in interview that The Real Tuesday Weld has “the depressing knack of getting into three verses and a chorus what I’ve just spent 100,000 words on”. The themes on the record are transformation and the loss of what you love (werewolves being such inconsiderate lovers), and it has the right degree of violence, debauchery and decadence, suffused with film noir atmospherics.

The first proper song (the album is punctuated by snippets of dialogue and exposition) is ‘Wolfman’, appropriately sung with a big bluesy howl, which would sound 60 years old if not for the synth blasts that bring it up to date. Like TRTW albums before it, the new record mixes and matches styles but never in such a transformative way; ‘(I Always Kill) The Things I Love’ has a 20s urbane crooning style with clarinet and jazzy backing, which is set alongside Pinkie Maclure’s soulful balladeering on ‘Save Me’ and classy modern pop with a dance beat for ‘Tear Us Apart’. ‘The Hunt’ is excellent expletive-laden swing, with Django Reinhardt-ish guitar and gypsy fiddle sawing away against the backing of the Puppini Sisters. Meanwhile, Big Bad Wolf meets Little Red Riding Piney as Angela Penhaligon duets with Stephen Coates at his most Gainsbourgian on the pathos-drenched pop of ‘Me And Mr Wolf’, which has a killer chorus.

It’s both a high-spec soundtrack and an eclectic set of pop tunes that juxtaposes styles and sounds from all sorts of genres and decades. It works perfectly, perhaps better than the concept has worked before, in generating the most vivid images from the sharpest sounds, and is a shoo-in for the soundtrack if the book is ever filmed. Packed into a brilliantly designed hardcover CD book, it’s not just an album, it’s an occasion.

Links:
http://www.tuesdayweld.com/
http://www.crammed.be/
http://www.myspace.com/therealtuesdayweld