Skip to content
Premieres

Wolfmother Leader Self-Releases New Wolfmother Album Under His Own Name

andrew stockdale, wolfmother

Well, this meets the day’s quota for sudden breakup and new album news: Wolfmother mastermind Andrew Stockdale has opted to release the Australian project’s long-in-the-works third album under his own name for free on SoundCloud.

On Tuesday (March 5), Stockdale announced he was dropping the Wolfmother moniker for the record, noting, “It’s a different trip now and I need to be true to myself.” The working title for the 14-track collection, which boasts a relentless sound indebted to Zeppelin’s brand of blues metal, has been reported as Gatherings, but the freshly unencumbered frontman is toying with another title. “I might call it Keep Moving,” he said in an interview with Wolfmother.net. “I’m still throwing it around.” Right now, SoundCloud has the LP listed simply as The Record.

“It’s like old-school, new-school, uptempo boogie rock,” Stockdale described. “The tones are all there — vintage drum tones, vintage guitar, vintage lossness. It’s like hearing an old piece of crap rock band squashed and blasted through some high-fi tape. The key to this whole record is to make it hold up to modern recording standards while still with the heart and soul of old rock records.”

The 36-year-old guitarist hinted that the follow-up to 2009’s Cosmic Egg was near completion back in February. “A release is coming together,” he tweeted back then. “God Bless iTunes for allowing spontaneity in the musical landscape of the world… this sh€:t is happening!” (At press time, the album wasn’t available on iTunes.)

Stockdale explained to Wolfmother.net that the “band” had essentially always been a solo project supported by a rotating cast of backup musicians and that this new effort was no different. “All the players involved have been fantastic,” he said. “Though for me, now I want the freedom to change members for whatever tour or whatever recording without having to use people or not use people to make it look like a band.”

Stockdale continued, “I just don’t want to call this record Wolfmother or do shows as Wolfmother. Is Wolfmother finished for good? It’s hard to speak in those terms… look at the last four years. I’m gonna keep doing what I’ve been doing and call it what it is, being Andrew Stockdale playing with various brilliant musos at any given point.”