THE Wildhearts

There is simply no other band quite like The Wildhearts. Since forming in Newcastle some 30 years ago, the quartet have become natural successors to the original British punk icons who inspired them – bringing acerbic and vitriolic sounds into the mainstream once again. But there was always so much more to that wall of noise than the obvious – they appropriated the earworm melodies of The Beatles and The Beach Boys to temper those often-metallic edges of sonic disarray. It would be this groundbreaking reimagination of heaviness that would help evolve punk rock into avenues new, feeling as exciting and dangerous as it did intelligent and considered, their ideas stemming from the head as much as the heart.

Now, a decade on from their last full-length, The Wildhearts have returned with ninth studio album Renaissance Men – an incredibly fitting name for a group who have taken a kitchen sink approach to music that, by their own admission, absorbs influence from as far and wide as Burt Bacharach and Abba. Founding singer/axeman Ginger and co-guitarist CJ explain how boxing yourself into a limited genre or style will only restrict the creative flow…

So which guitars did you use for the new recordings?

: “I still play my highly customised B.B. King signature. I remember we went to the Gibson Custom shop in Nashville becausehas this guy done to this guitar?!’. I wanted to individualise it so I didn’t get mistaken for B.B. King! I didn’t even own a guitar when this band got started. Ginger had this black Ibanez I used and soon we started borrowing Gibsons for our gigs. They lent me this Lucille in 1990; eventually I got enough money from our label to buy it. There’s probably about five layers of stickers now. They don’t get cleaned or taken off, we just keep adding more. The original pickups were more bluesy and low output, so someone at Gibson had this other thing he thought I’d like. It has no make or marking… no one can figure out what it is!”