People who like Wolfie ...

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... are the luckiest people of all.

It often seems as if nobody likes them. At all. And I don't mean that in a "not enough people have heard them" sort of way: even those who have heard them seem to have been mostly baffled, irked, or nauseated by the experience.

But I think that at their best they were pretty much sublimely fantastic; I really truly love Awful Mess Mystery and a great deal of Where's Wolfie, enough so that I'm willing to pretend that everything that happened after that didn't actually happen. Suffice it to say that whatever I was responding to in their music was something the band itself didn't even seem to be responding to, as they lost it entirely.

This is the thread where I hold up a banner and hope that a few posters will -- maybe? just maybe? -- agree. Lurkers, too! Lurkers, let your love for Wolfie be the thing that outs you!

(Prediction: unread, unanswered, forevermore.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:16 (twenty-three years ago)

i've got a single of theirs (i think? or am i confusing them with Winterbrief?) which is pretty cool..

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:20 (twenty-three years ago)

wolfie suxx u r twee and gay

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:27 (twenty-three years ago)

(nb: i've never heard them)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Jason Ankeny of the AMG likes them, but evidently in a completely different way than I do: his picks for best album and stand-out songs (assuming those are his) are radically opposed to what I might choose.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:32 (twenty-three years ago)

I think I've seen them, but I can't remember. That either says it all or says nothing at all.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:35 (twenty-three years ago)

actually i only have the Gants tribute 7" and their split with Kincaid. and i can't remember either track at all

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:36 (twenty-three years ago)

I do vaguely remember a friend saying "Eww, it's Wolfie, let's go." (That too either says it all or says nothing at all.)

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:36 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember I had Awful Mess Mystery in my shopping cart from Parasol but switched it out for either Bikeride or Green Pajamas. My loss, I'm sure.

― Aaron A., Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:38 (twenty-three years ago)

No, wait, here it comes: it was in a classroom temporarily converted to a concert hall at the Massachusetts College of Art some time in 2001. Wolfie was the last act, preceded by a number of terrible MassArt bands. It was nonetheless entertaining to see the cute art students come and go and sneak cigarettes in the far corners of the room. But we did leave before Wolfie played. Maybe that's why I can't remember them!

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 23:42 (twenty-three years ago)

Wolfie sucks bigtime. Listening to them is like drowning
in a vat of week-old Red Jello. In short, they make every
other bad band sound good.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:07 (twenty-three years ago)

(Nabisco: can you tape me some Wolfie? I'm curious to know what makes you so excited about them.)

― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Wolfie rarities album here. If you love Wolfie or you don't know if you love Wolfie, or if you don't love Wolfie and you are willing to learn to love them, start downloading now.

I will try to articulate my love later.

― Miranda (Miranda), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:13 (twenty-three years ago)

I can always depend on Miranda to be sensible! Hooray for Miranda.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:20 (twenty-three years ago)

("Sensible" = agree with me about random twee and electropop issues.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I am now listening to the songs I downloaded and I am noticing all of the characteristics that make people hate them. In fact, all of those characteristics are amplified - understandable seeing that these are the songs they chose not to release. The off-key vocals, the simplistic song structure, the even more simplistic musicianship, super-twee (nasal) vocals with boy/girl harmonizing. Of course, these are the things that make them great. Simple pleasures - those who hate are allergic to fun.

Of course, most of the people I know who embrace Wolfie can't understand the appeal of a Trina single, so they're wrong too. In either case, I wonder if the hate has more to do with hating the idea than it does with hating the sounds that result from the idea.

― Miranda (Miranda), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:34 (twenty-three years ago)

, two Wolfie albums (Where's Wolfie and And The Coat And Hat), have listened to them both maybe twice, enjoyed them, and never played them again. Maybe it is time to listen to them again. Is there one stand-out stellar song I should watch for?

― Chris P (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:36 (twenty-three years ago)

For values of ", two" equalling "I have, like, two", of course.

― Chris P (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Listen to "Steely Dan." Brent DiCrescenzo likes it.

"Steely Dan" is so incompetent that it manages to make Bis sound vaguely techinically accomplished.

― Miranda (Miranda), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Of course, I love bis too. If I was going to pick one song off the top of my head it would be "Busy, Busy, Busy." There are probably others, but I'd need to dig out the albums again and give them a listen before I'd be able to say which ones.

― Miranda (Miranda), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:52 (twenty-three years ago)

From that review: Maybe I should write a two- chord song about my feelings and impress the guy that runs Signal Drench. I think I'll call it "My Wittle heart is All Pitter- Patty." It will go G C G C D and it'll have some moog- stabs in there. I'll get a girl in a tight t-shirt to go "la-la-la" over it.

I remember reading this review when it came out -- I think it was one of my first inklings that all was not well in the Forkiverse.

I mean, who ever heard of a two-chord song with three chords?

― Chris P (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 00:56 (twenty-three years ago)

My song recommendations = "Hey It's Finally Yay," "Want to Practice (You Do)," and "Subroutine the Reward." I love lots of the Where's Wolfie stuff ("Busy Busy Busy," the keyboard solo on "So Brother") but not nearly as much as the first one, and I make no apologies for the stuff after that. It's not out of purism that I'd say that the beginning of Awful Mess Mystery is a perfectly great intro to Wolfie in and of itself.

I think the trick to appreciating Wolfie is to imagine they're children who think they're AC/DC or Kiss.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 03:10 (twenty-three years ago)

doesn't his voice annoy? it's not as awful as them out of mates of state but it is pretty close.

― keith (keithmcl), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 03:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I like all three of their albums. Sure, they're simple. They were pretty rocking live too.

And I like the nasally voice.

― Patrick South (Patrick South), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 03:19 (twenty-three years ago)

I had Where's Wolfie? at one point but the CD broke and I made no effort to replace it. I liked a few songs on it.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 03:30 (twenty-three years ago)

Mates of State - argh. Frustrating band. Great songs,
great girl singer, but she lets the drummer sing and
he %$#$'s it up every time.

And Wolfie CD's spontaneously breaking isn't a merciful act of god
I don't know what is.

― skwurl plise (Squirrel_Police), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 04:27 (twenty-three years ago)

MoS = tweemo

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 04:27 (twenty-three years ago)

I like the one Wolfie CD I have ("tall dark hill")

― jel -- (jel), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 18:22 (twenty-three years ago)

three years pass...

I love Wolfie's Awful Mess Mystery. It works very well in the car--it didn't leave the cd player for a couple weeks when I started loving it (admittedly I wasn't doing much long-distance driving at the time.) It reminds me of a rainy day when I took my girlfriend to the Tampa Museum of Art for her birthday (we liked the piece that spun a mechanical bird round and round against a backdrop of moving charcoal-grey clouds), and bought her an old locket that had a picture of a guy from a lost era with a bit of hair behind it from a funny Cuban jeweler ("Hold onto her, she's a keeper") . A perfect memory to associate with this album, I'd say. Thank god I found this album before I got too old, er--thank Nitsuh, actually. I originally heard of it in that Twee feature, I think.

I can't imagine someone liking something off of Sarah or K records and not liking this album, after getting over the nasally vocals, anyway.

― mega machine (mattmc387), Saturday, 24 June 2006 20:37 (nineteen years ago)

Re: Wolfie -- haven't heard them. More or less primitive than Cub?

― Pessimist (Pessimist), Saturday, 24 June 2006 20:42 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not really sure which you'd call more primitive, I think their simplicity is comparable. I don't listen to Cub, though, not even Beat Happening much. I much prefer Wolfie. There is a bouncy energy to their music that is more likely to keep my attention than other twee acts.

― mega machine (mattmc387), Saturday, 24 June 2006 20:49 (nineteen years ago)

Hm... given that Come Out, Come Out is probably one of my top 20-25 albums of all time, I'm only mildly fond of anything else Cub did, I mostly like Beat Happening in principle a lot more than Beat Happening in practice...

...lead singer's a guy, right?

(Or I could stop trying to triangulate my probable opinion on this band and just listen to them. But where's the fun in that?)

― Pessimist (Pessimist), Sunday, 25 June 2006 00:56 (nineteen years ago)

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