Goldheart Assembly/ Wolves and Thieves

Goldheart Assembly
Wolves and Thieves
(Fierce Panda)

Bands like Goldheart Assembly - bands with big hooks and proper choruses - make easy targets for indier-than-thou types with a knee-jerk aversion to anything ‘mainstream’. And it’s unfair because song-craft and melody are virtues too, often eschewed for ill-conceived attempts at innovation.
Make no mistake, Wolves and Thieves is an album with plenty of crossover potential. Something that won’t have been lost on the folks over at Fierce Panda, a label responsible for putting out records from the likes of Keane and Coldplay back in the day. Since their inception, Fierce Panda have been instrumental in breaking bands out of the indie ghetto and taking them from relative obscurity to daytime radio ubiquity in the blink of an eye.
There’s a generous application of FM radio gloss here that regularly threatens to compromise the understated charm of the songs. Naturally, there are a few duds. Inexplicable single choice ‘So Long St Christopher’s’ dreary Radio 1 balladry falls on its face so hard you can almost make out members of Athlete laughing in the background. On the contrary, songs like ‘Hope Hung High’ and ‘Jesus Wheel’ exhibit what this band do best which is let the songs speak for themselves; songs with gorgeous vocal harmonies and melodies that break your heart anew every time you hear them. And apparently they’re the British Fleet Foxes, which is something you’re likely to read in every article or review regarding Goldheart Assembly from now until the end of time.