SOUND BITES

Depending on who you ask, Victorious could be Wolfmother's third, fourth or fifth album. Keep Moving , originally slated to be the third album to bear the Wolfmother name, was instead released as an Andrew Stockdale solo record in 2013. Then, a year later, the rough version of a new Wolfmother record, New Crown , was posted to the band's Soundcloud page. The latter record eventually saw a limited physical release (as of this writing it's not available for purchase except in digital format), but good luck getting your hands on a CD of it unless you caught the short window when it was sold on their website. So, according to my CD shelf, Victorious is Wolfmother's third official major release, which would also make it the first properly released and promoted album from the group since 2009's Cosmic Egg . That's not to say that Keep Moving and New Crown don't exist, but that is to say that unless you've been paying very close attention this re...

For as dry as the last couple months of 2015 were, I'd have expected to be looking at a slew of exciting releases to ring in 2016. As it stands, though, not a lot has been confirmed as of yet. Still, what the release schedule is lacking in certainty is more than made up for in its possibilities for the coming twelve months. Before we head into the murky waters of speculation, let's check out some of 2016's sure things:

Andrew Stockdale is no stranger to surprising people; about a year ago, a rough version of his debut solo record Keep Moving was posted to Soundcloud without warning (under the Wolfmother name, although he would announce its release as a solo album about two weeks later). So another Wolfmother album appearing suddenly isn't altogether shocking. Nevertheless, here we have it; New Crown , with a cover that seems to confirm it as the third proper Wolfmother album we almost got in 2013, streaming in all its ragged glory at the group's Bandcamp site . Listening through the first time, there's an overwhelming sense of rawness; most of these songs sound like demos, which leads me to believe that there's a more polished version of this record in the making. That said, album opener (and probable first single) How Many Times is the most finished sounding song here; it has the crispest mix of the ten tracks, and is the only one that hearkens back to previous Wolfmother suc...