What we’d heard of the debut album from UK three-piece Noisettes was the uptempo pop of single ‘Don’t Upset The Rhythm’, so imagine our surprise when album opener ‘Sometimes’ completely re-wrote everything we’d expected it to be. It cracks ‘Wild Young Hearts’ open with a slice of decidedly melodic, intimate, acoustic guitar-laden soul.
As it lulls the listener into a false sense of calm, ‘Don’t Upset The Rhythm’ comes thumping along to remind that not everything is to be what it might seem throughout the album’s eleven tracks, while the title track mixes things up a little more, delivering a ‘60s-esque pop feel, punctuated with stabs of electric guitar, which rocks the boat to one side.
After ’24 Hours’, with it’s ‘80s electro opening, ‘Every Now And Then’ takes the tempo down, and drags the mood with it alongside it’s message of longing, while ‘Beat Of My Heart’ cranks things up again, rocking it’s way through three minutes and 22 seconds of plastic.
And like a rollercoaster, it’s back down with the tempo on ‘Atticus’.
By track eight, we’re exhausted. The startlingly beautiful vocals of Shingai Shoniwa are let to shine on the album’s more mellow moments, but it’s contrasted by everything from dance pop to rock to the reggae-tinged ‘Never Forget You’ and the peppy ‘So Complicated’.
With such musical diversity in it’s contents, we feel that ‘Wild Young Hearts’, although well-produced and desperately original, is a little too disjointed for our tastes, dragging us from one genre to the next so often that it left us slightly dizzy. It seems that it doesn’t quite know what kind of album it wants to be when it grows up.
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