It’s hard not to feel a wave of joy as Andrew Stockdale gloriously and eccentrically rolls the ‘r’ of ‘riding’ in the first line of title-track ‘Victorious’. Wolfmother are back. Indeed, ‘Victorious’ is something of a comeback record, and it has the feel of being a bit stripped-back, maybe not as dark or stoner-rock influenced as their second album ‘Cosmic Egg’, or as raw and MC5-like as their self-released ‘New Crown’. The formula has changed; more immediate and with fewer layers of instrumentation, aimed at a younger, if similarly long-haired, crowd than the teenagers now approaching 30 who bought their debut in 2005.
