CJ Wildheart – Lives
Release Date: 9th September 2022
Label: Devilspit Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Hard Rock, Punk.
FFO: The Wildhearts, The Jellys, Honeycrack.
Review By: Paul Franklin
During his long and varied musical career, it could be said that CJ Wildheart has lived many lives, and therefore it seems appropriate that he has chosen that as the title for his greatest hits collection. And, with the newly reformed Wildhearts now un-reformed, now seems like the appropriate time to release it.
A greatest hits album can be a tricky beast. They can be a great introduction to a band for new listeners, but dedicated fans will more than likely already own all the tracks on other releases. An artist may (cynically?) tack a demo, or live version on at the end as a sweetener, but in reality, you’re just buying no more than a glorified playlist that you could have easily put together yourself.
The fact that Lives is not just a run-of-the-mill ‘best of’ album shows that CJ is of the same opinion. “One thing that has always put me off best of albums is they are normally just compilations that have had absolutely no thought put into them. I didn’t want to go down that route.” He comments. So, what he has done is take tracks covering his career from The Wildhearts, through Honeycrack and The Jellys into his solo years, reimagine and rerecord 11 of the older ones and remix the other newer solo tracks.
Bullet for My Valentine sticksman, Jason Bowld, is behind the kit for all the rerecorded tracks, and he brings a hard-hitting energy to the proceedings. However, that’s to take nothing away from CJ, whose performance is akin to someone finding their beloved childhood toys in the attic and rediscovering the pure joy they gave him. There is such a vitality and exuberance to the likes of Little Flower (The Wildhearts), Sitting at Home (Honeycrack) and Girl’s on Fire (Solo) that you could be forgiven for thinking that they were recorded live, straight off the bat, one after the other. Bang, bang, bang.
The remixed version of songs from his last release Siege (review here – https://www.metalepidemic.com/cj-wildheart-siege/) still hit you in the head with the stinging impact of a “slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick”. State of Us kicks off the album by managing to sound like both the 3-minute warning and the subsequent invasion at the same time. Whilst, Shit Brick (which definitely should feature on a Dulux colour chart) is the sound of a pissed up diarrhetic rhino staging a dirty protest in a Laura Ashley show home.
The tracks from Honeycrack (Sitting at Home, Go Away) and The Jellys (Lemonade Girl, Milk n Honey) have been brought out of the loft, still in their pristine ‘pop’ wrapper, then kicked down the stairs a few times, scuffing them up with a punkier edge. They sound faster, too? The contrast between the obscenely catchy Wildhearts B-side Hit It On The Head and the solo Tealeaf (which sounds like being stuck in a Guy Richie wet dream narrated by Phil Daniels) highlight just how prolific and diverse Mr W has been over the years.
Let’s hope he believes in reincarnation, and that there are many more Lives to come.
(4 / 5)
