Twisted Wheel. True Rock n Roll hearts, No.1 in the charts
All images courtesy of Trust A Fox Photography
Twisted Wheel reformed in January 2018. As June ended, they found out their new EP, 'Jonny Guitar', was No.1 on the Physical Release Chart - twenty minutes before they went on stage supporting Liam Galllagher at London's Finsbury Park. The band's fierce ascent has been driven further by a swelling of fans across the UK and beyond, with the digital download release which followed.
Back in the 1990's bands were made by EPs.
An EP was, to the band, what the short story is to the writer. It was not the mixtape. It was not a catalogue of all your old songs. It was the punch line to everything you were about and yet to be.
And creating a sound EP is often harder than collating an album. It is a work of art, sweat and guts as well as cunning charm offensive.
Twisted Wheel, the band that, like a bad junkie, refused to just go away, thrown to the dogs as another indie/punk rock whatever has returned leading the pack and carrying the biggest bone.
The imperative has found its way through sold-out shows on Twisted Wheel's recent 'Snakes and Ladders' tour, up and down the UK, and now in the form of the release of this EP:
The eponymous 'Jonny Guitar', a coyote chorus with raging guitars documenting the brutal mundanity of addiction.
It details lead singer Jonny Brown's last breath as an addict, pawning his guitars and hearing the shouldawouldacouldas declare his reputation.
'Rebel', the bittersweet roar of loneliness with psychedelic overtones,
'Keep it up Boy' is a memorable rock 'n'roll groover with walls of sound and hope, finishing with an achingly haunting tribute to a pigeon in 'The Convoy Man.'
The 'Jonny Guitar' EP demonstrates Twisted Wheel's uncanny talent to maximise the elusive eternity in the ordinary and Brown's ability to create anthems and palaces from the trash of life.
What Bowie would sound like in a bin bag with a unicorn wearing a football shirt.
No autotune in sight; these are songs you feel, see and live.
With a multitude of subtle influences for the more precise, Twisted Wheel's real strength is the ability to pound out genuine songs that activate your gut and your memory and swell audience's hearts; the backbone of rock and roll.
Theirs is an authentic story on very firm foundations.
Twisted Wheel were the twenty year old feral rock'n'rollers who tore open the last Oasis shows in 2009 while playing many sell-out headline shows for two years straight.
Retreating to lick their wounds and terrorise the neighbours, they return a decade later with their irreverent disregard for commercial domestication, rolling out a relentless forty date Snakes and Ladders Tour to announce their arrival. 2018 IS the year of the guitar band renaissance. This was meant to be.
Jonny reformed the band in January 2018, pulling back Adam Clarke from the original line up, Richard Allsopp and Shadow Palace's Harry Levin. Since then, they have been rehearsing, recording and relentlessly touring. Crowds, starved of the rigour of real rock-n-roll meat 'n' bones, have been storming the shows, all but four selling out.
The EP is both a thank you for the fans that have welcomed them back, stayed faithful over the past decade and a teaser for the monster incipient wasp of an album appearing later this year.
Twisted Wheel is no longer a threat on the horizon; the charted EP proves they are now pounding on the door.
Summer 2018 finds them supporting Liam Gallagher at Finsbury Park and Manchester’s Old Trafford Cricket Ground.
They also support The Libertines at Mansion On The Moon, in Ipswich on September 8th, along with more festival dates. If the first of those mentioned is anything to go by, their fan base is only going to swell.
It was already great that there were a couple of hundred people in front of the stage half an hour before their set on Friday 29th June at Finsbury Park in London.
It was utterly gob smacking that by the time Twisted Wheel went on, there was to an ocean of audience that visibly and audibly fell increasingly in love through their set.
All generations of a diverse crowd getting into the band through their triumph of a live set. You couldn't make it up. Twisted Wheel are the "Our Band" for the music loving people of now. They are about to announce a headline 'Jonny Guitar 'tour over October to December.
Twisted Wheel may have been thrown to the wolves but they just came back leading the pack...
Swag: twistedwheel.tmstor.es
Article by Nina Bhadreshwar / Heather Minx Ferguson. Photography (c) Nidge Luhg Sanders, Trust A Fox.
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