Noisettes at ABC

Sunday, 11 October, 2009

With ,strong>Noisettes, it’s always best to expect the unexpected. Two years on from a debut album awash with punk spirit and scorching blues-rock, the London trio return with Wild Young Hearts, a set of sleek pop songs steeped in soul, dizzy on disco and harking back to the days of blues and jazz greats.

From the stomping electro-rock of Saturday Night and galloping funk grooves of forthcoming, first single Don’t Upset The Rhythm, to the joyous, jazzy title track, the glorious ‘60s-tinged soul of Never Forget You and the sultry, shimmering pop of 24 Hours, in Wild Young Hearts, Noisettes have made what is set to be one of 2009’s most adventurous albums.

Never fond of a formula, the trio always intended on a radical musical detour from their acclaimed debut, What’s The Time Mr Wolf?, an album that spawned five singles and took them on tour for over a year, sharing arena stages with Muse and criss-crossing the States with TV On The Radio and Bloc Party.

Noisettes certainly took an unconventional approach to starting songwriting. Fresh from tour in summer 2007, guitarist Dan Smith (a man known to pair silver trousers with a yellow, sequinned shirt) and bearded drummer Jamie Morrison (who still seems surprised to be in a band at all) began sonic experiments that involved getting stoned before trips to the Natural History Museum, then attempting to cover the likes of Britney’s Hit Me Baby (One More Time).