Wolfmanhattan Project new CD "Summer Forever and Ever" Got 40 copies of the new album featuring Kid Congo Powers (The Cramps,Gun Club, Bad Seeds, Pink Monkey Birds) , Mick Collins (The Gories and Dirtbombs), Bob Bert (Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Chrome Cranks, Jon Spencer)


Wolfmanhattan Project marshals a considerable amount of garage punk firepower. Its three members are Kid Congo Powers (of Gun Club, the Cramps, the Bad Seeds, Pink Monkey Birds, etc.), Mick Collins (Dirt Bombs and the Gories) and Bob Bert (the original drummer for Sonic Youth, also Pussy Galore and bands led by Lydia Lunch and Jon Spencer), all cult icons in their own greasy, fuzz-busted, rock and roll way.

In 2019, when the first Wolfmanhattan Project album surfaced, it seemed like it might be a one off. After all, how often would these three guys’ calendars clear long enough to add to the catalogue? And yet it was worth hoping for another helping of something so good. My review of Blue Gene Stew asked “Who knows what possessed Mick Collins, Kid Congo Powers and Bob Bert to hook up for the Wolfmanhattan Project? But good thing they did, because here we have giddy garage contraption which combines Collins’ sci-fi obsessions, Powers’ hallucinogenic visions and Bert’s power-house pound—along with a hefty helping of fuzzy r ‘n r mayhem.”

With the first album it was possible to discern which member birthed which songs—there were cuts that sounded like the Dirtbombs and songs that sounded like Kid Congo Powers and one barn-burning punker that clearly belonged to Bert. That’s true again, but not as definitively. “Countdown Love” bucks and wallops in a Bob Bert like way, and “H Hour” has Collins’ distortion crusted, dirty, catchy mark on it, and “Very Next Songs” is equal parts mystic and rocking, as Kid Congo Powers often is. And yet, these songs sound more cohesive, more like each other, than on the previous album. It tastes like a good stew on the next day, all the flavors distinguishable but melded somehow. Could we dare to hope that Wolfmanhattan Project has turned from an occasional goof into an actual band?

Summer for Ever and Ever has its feel-good pop ragers (like the title track), its banging, raging, jungle-drumming pipedreams (“Respectable Pigs”), and its weird sound sculpted intervals (“New in the World” with its distended chords, its wandering piano and its dying rattlesnake tambourine)—that is, all the irregular pieces that made Blue Gene Stew, so fascinating. But the pieces fit together this time in a worn-in, practiced way.

You might look for wisdom from this trio of guys who’ve been at the rock endeavor for this long, and indeed, “Very Next Song,” contains a couplet that defines longevity in the arts or life or anything else. “We make the work…” chants Powers above a thrash of noisy guitar play and thundering beats, “And the work makes us.” Amen to that, and more of it.

Jennifer Kelly NOTE: Postage in USA $5 Canada $13 Rest of World $29