Symphonic pop of the Electric Light Orchestra variety is a hard thing to pull off and even when it succeeds it’s very much an acquired taste. When Max McElligott – AKA Wolf Gang - first appeared a couple of years ago with an EP on the Neon Gold label, he seemed have the balance between opulent and poptastic just about right. It had a blustery chamber-pop charm and was, at the very least, a promising opening shot. His debut album, though, has pushed the boat out too far. It is over-enamoured with its own lusciousness, a precision Crufts-groomed show poodle of an album wearing diamante earrings.
There are moments when punchy songs break through, such as the anthemic “The King and all his Men”, which place McElligott, with his yelpy nasal voice, alongside the explosive melodramatic pop of Luke Steele (of Empire of the Sun and The Sleepy Jackson), and the closing Scissor Sisters-ish power ballad “Planets” has its moments. Mostly, though, what springs to mind is Elton John on an off-day getting carried away with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. McElligott’s co-conspirator is Dave Fridmann, an American producer with a solid reputation for lending alt-rock bands an orchestrated setting that allows them to explore their poppier side.
Undoubtedly his work with MGMT and The Flaming Lips was key to his being chosen as producer here, for Suego Faults aspires to the work of those bands; what it lacks is their underlying psychedelic strangeness. Wolf Gang has more in common with the perma-puppy-ish bounce of Mika. There is little sense of happy accident here, of an artist reaching into the ether for something new and wonderful. It’s all shrewdly self-aware and, by the end, simply too much. Wolf Gang haven’t iced the songs in orchestral sugar, they’ve drowned them in candy.
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