Wolfmother - Denver, CO

Cheap warm beer; a puffy green haze looming above the crowd; sweaty rock fans, packed together like animals, screaming with devil horns in the air. My whole life I have dreamt of being a rock fan in the seventies. This night, at Denver's Bluebird Theater, I at least got to pretend when Australian trio Wolfmother showed up to rock our loud, fantasy rock deprived asses.

As soon as the show started with a loud flawless performance of "Dimension," Wolfmother made it clear that they were not here to mess around. Before the show even took place, promoters around Denver were already calling it the show of the year. So the band had a lot to live up to and they played knowing exactly what they had to do.

Lead singer and guitar player Andrew Stockdale's evil goblin sounding voice was enough to make both Robert Plant and Jack White very proud men. His strong power chords and knee dropping guitar solos could have fit in to any MC5 show ever played while Chris Ross's madness on the keys made for a very entertaining trip back to the seventies. And on the drums, Myles Heskett's aggressive pounding would have easily found John Bonham's approval.

The trio exploded into each song with the kind of ferociousness only a band named Wolfmother could bring. There are a lot of other wolves out there playing music, but these wolves could easily devour all of them. If Wolf Parade and We Are Wolves are the weird art kids in high-school school, Wolfmother is the nihilist loner smoking J's in the bathroom.

"White Unicorn" was the highlight of the night, with a long freak-out of a bridge that was as mind-altering as any drug. Songs such as "Mind's Eye" and "Woman" rocked more intensively than on the album, making Wolfmother's live show a must see. Stockdale, with his large curly afro and little beady eyes, was already well received by the crowd and he took full advantage of the love by revving the fans up with classic rock-god moves such as jumping off of the drummer's platform and swinging his guitar high up above his head. The guys encored with a colossal performance of, err..."Colossal," before closing the night with "Joker and the Thief."

Being at a Wolfmother show is probably the closest anyone in this generation is ever going to get to reliving the excitement that some of our parents and older siblings got to live during the late sixties and seventies. The best part about it is that with them, it's all real. The look, the lights, the sound, there is nothing funny or ironic with Wolfmother. Not like those British wankers The Darkness. At a Wolfmother show you are taken back to a time when being a rock 'n roll fan seemed like a hell of a lot more fun than people my age could ever imagine.