West Coast Wolves Release Long-Awaited Full-Length Album Don’t Forget To Howl
West Coast Wolves Release Long-Awaited Full-Length Album Don’t Forget To Howl
Starting out with just a banjo and a goat skinned djembe drum, the West Coast Wolves have been building a buzz since they started performing the songs off ‘Don’t Forget to Howl’, a record they describe as “Searching, fun & heavy at times….” which captures the live energy of the band as they explore the fusion of folkrock, country, bluegrass, and more. The Wolves are surfers with strong connections to the ocean & kreef Gods of Southern Africa’s diabolical West Coast. Their ethos, ‘music, surf, jol’ (a South African term for a ‘good time’), mirrors the band’s character as they embrace an against-the-grain lifestyle out on the West Coast.
Speaking about the inspiration for the album the band states, “At the heart of it, music gives us goosebumps. It makes our hair stand on end.” The rush of playing together, tapping into the ‘flow-state when the gears just seem to fit perfectly together without any real effort and creating something original and special is the driving force behind the album.” The Wolves emphasize their conscious effort to contribute music that adds value to the world’s “body of knowledge” and aims to be both provocative and inspiring while avoiding adding to the world’s negativity. While not centred around “love,” there’s a kindness that runs through the album. Addressing topics like loneliness, parenting, abuse, and societal pitfalls, the band offers a message of hope, emphasizing that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The band describes their writing process as beginning with no pre-conceived ideas (or even a genre), building from ground-zero, conjuring sounds and songs from nothing but dust, bones, and faded memories. “It’s special because we write stuff together that none of us could ever write alone, and we’ve become very conscious of that the more we play, the more we write, the more we create”.
