Asked in a recent interview with Sound Dessert about who they’d like to tour with, The Ghost Wolves dropped this collection of luminaries: “JEFF The Brotherhood, The Kills, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Black Sabbath, Kadavar, The Black Angels, Jack White, Diarrhea Planet, Drivin’ N Cryin’ — those are some of the tops. We wish The Cramps were still around, that would’ve been fun. We love Poison Ivy!”
It’s a revealing list, especially the Jack White and Jon Spencer references — The Ghost Wolves’ primal Rock & Roll wail conjures The White Stripes filtered through the Blues Explosion’s campy revivalism. If White is sore that The Black Keys owe him their career, we can’t wait to hear what he says about The Ghost Wolves, a conceptually minded husband-and-wife duo featuring Carley Wolf on guitar and vocals and Jonathan Wolf on drums.
The Wolves’ new album, Man, Woman, Beast, released on Cheetah Crome’s Plowboy label, is rife with familiar touchstones (see the list above), but it’s hard to deny their enthusiasm, which is best exemplified by the duo’s incessant touring (this will be their third Cincinnati-area stop in just over a year). The perpetually white-clad Carley, who has a strong resemblance to Carrie Brownstein, plays a one-string guitar and possesses a girlish voice that does little to temper the band’s campier aspects. She somehow makes lyrics like, “I got the itch, irresistible itch/I know what I want, but I just can’t have it” sound convincing. But Jonathan is the glue — his powerful, often restrained drumming holding everything together.
THE GHOST WOLVES with LEGGY play MOTR Pub Thursday, June 19. Tickets/more info here .
