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Twisted Wheel (if you follow the usual indie-rock trajectory) should’ve disappeared by now.
Rapidly signed by a major following a surge of support, strong songs and an In The City performance in Manchester, the band went on to support Oasis, Kasabian, Paul Weller and other hot potatoes over the past two years as well as their own headline tours. However, limited releases and unreleases led to the realisation that control was not theirs. Their eponymous debut album press presented them even further away as ‘your local Manchester lads’ – a confusing contradiction to the punk random intensity of their songs.
Indie-heads looking for a fashionable easy-to-digest image and sound became scathing while punters demanded more. Instead of the band’s own hand-drawn graphics, a photo of anorak-clad Mancunian likelies was the selling image. Maybe that rubbed off on the bass player and drummer who, after three years of non-stop touring, rehearsing and recording, decided they’d ‘rather have regular lives and jobs and see their girlfriends more.’
Which left Jonny Brown plus tunes and his rather irrepressive imagination. Even mighty men would have folded at this point (summer 2010), especially when his mother suddenly died after he spent a month by her bedside in a Spanish intensive care unit. But some bizarre phoenix seems to have been born instead… along with 28 new tracks and a determination to seize back the reins.
With a fervent drummer, Eoghan Clifford, and bassist, Stephen Evans, rigorous seven-days-a week-rehearsals and no holds on Brown’s sharp observational wit or the machine-like ferocity he bears upon both vocals and playing, the wheel has indeed grown in momentum. While contemporaries go for cardboard cut-out rock’n’roll, Twisted Wheel look like being the rawest outfit in the country as the sold-out understated gigs testify.
The new songs are a return to the grit and sweat, rhythm and blues of the 50s and 60s. They are about sound. The songs, The feel, texture. Not the clothes, the haircut, the trophy girlfriends. Image is dead. This is real punk. The songs don’t grow on you – they leap on you, copulate and become a part of you before you’ve even learnt the name. In fact, some of them are so new, they don’t even have names. They’re just feral, fierce and very fanciable. So good, they’re offensive.
Or so it seemed to me when I reluctantly attended one of their recent gigs in the Midlands. ‘UK Blues’ is a meteorite, a roar of outrage at the state of the nation while everyone else is moaning at the state of their own purse. ‘Do It Again’ is raw punk, ‘Poppy Love ’is a rabid romantic riot in the capsule of 50s rockabilly punk and a staccato chorus over which Brown’s vocals rip with unrelenting fierce vulnerability. Then there’s ‘Better Man’ with its searing melodies and a reggae-inflected track without a title which had everyone clapping two bars in. Obviously the old songs get the sing-back but it’s the new songs that blow me away. Just when you thought the Britain couldn’t get any littler, with every last melody pimped out to production houses in America and Jay Z, here comes the artillery – this time with some original ammunition.
Twisted Wheel are the band that proves rock and roll is still alive and kicking in the United Kingdom. No major media support, no radio play, every bit of shit know to man thrown at ‘em and they’re still rocking, ripping up venues and are probably the one band actually commenting on the state of the nation, rallying pure punk troops.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it appears we’re going to have to deal with them. With a new album due to be released early next year and sold-out gigs across the UK on both sides of Christmas and beyond, they are recharting the territory, reclaiming music for the people by any means necessary.
As bonkers as their tunes? Time will tell whether they can really deliver the kickstart British music needs.
Words by Jaime Scrivener
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