by Scott Yohe
A lot has changed since 2017, the world is completely different. It has been hard to look back on these years and truly grasp all that has happened, it almost feels like we never really will. However, something has remained consistent all this time. The Australian rock group Wireheads still makes great music. Sure, it has been almost seven years since their last album, Lighting Ears, but nothing has changed. They are still putting out some of the best indie rock in the game. Their latest record, Potentially Venus, could very well be their best yet. It proves that the best things come to those who wait, at least most of the time.
After going through the motions of writing songs as normal for various other projects, Wireheads bandleader, Dom Trimboli realized that the songs he was now writing were going to be Wireheads songs. It was time to get the band back together. Potentially Venus picks up where Wireheads left off while remaining its own thing sonically. The abstract lyrics remain, and their instrumental forays into jangle-pop, post-punk, straight-up indie-rock, and noise rock all remain. Yet everything feels like the natural evolution of their former records.
The album opens with quite the rocking instrumental on “Hook Echo” which is paired with an almost talking/singing vocal style, a fantastic way to open up the record that any fan of the genre could easily get into. The next song “Persistent Resistance” shows off some of the attitude that the band has always had while still keeping it playful. Perhaps that is one of the greatest strengths of Wireheads, they are able to give off the feeling of having a good time while remaining serious underneath it all. The song “1000 Red Venomous Snakes” (a fitting name for something from Australia) is almost a straight-up garage punk song, and it features one of the best guitar solos on the entire record. “Killer Bee” slows things down to a bouncy jam about living near the police and how it is hard to have fun near them. The album continues following this sort of pattern, it ebbs and flows with speed and slowing down. The penultimate track, “The Cascadia Fault Line” features a lovely duet between Trimboli and guitarist Harriet Fraser-Barbour.
In the end, it was completely worth the wait for Potentially Venus. The record came at the perfect time and on the band's own terms. Wireheads have delivered the perfect Wireheads experience. It jangles, it rocks, it’s noisy, it's funny, and it is everything that a Wireheads album should be. Potentially Venus is everything that an album like this should be, a good time proving that patience is a virtue. If we have to wait this long for another Wireheads album then that is fine with me, Potentially Venus can easily hold my attention for a long time.