My Medicine

The advantage of working though a medium frequently pronounced dead is there’s no expectations. Wilt, if you don’t know, operate in an area of goosepimply choon-punk, not a million miles from Sugar, Foo Fighters, Weezer and others of that stripe.

They have got it all going on: big beefy choruses, a rhythm section that don’t lose their nerve at high speed or volume, a nice line in multi-tracked vocal melodies, and guitars like a gravel bath.Their songs easily outpunch their weight, due in no small part to the production of Dave Eringa, who knows just when to stop applying extra coats of lacquer.

Songs one to six on My Medicine, particularly ‘Distortion’ and ‘Take Me Home’, are near immaculate weldings of melody and metal. Thereafter the songwriting loses a little steam, but not enough to imperil the high batting average.

So far so good, but what’s tantalising is how My Medicine could’ve made good brain food as well as ear candy. Consider the following scenario:

Yonder sits Mr Battle squished onto a corner of the five o’ clock DART, his bespectacled head buried in a property supplement, seething, scheming, plotting the revenge of the nerds. Here, he’s the Dublin cousin of the Elvis Costello that Nick Kent characterised in 1977 as a computer operator about to go postal.

Such a photo-fit might suit Battle in a couple of years, but not quite yet. Several times on My Medicine the singer broaches subject matters that, if pursued further, could’ve made him a singular voice in Irish rock ’n’ roll. On the title tune for example, he hints at the effect of scrip drugs on the neuroses and psychoses of the Irish condition, alluding to the collective fears and anxieties of a society in danger of becoming a corporate-run, Sky-sponsored, beauty-mythed urban sprawl populated by exhausted work zombies.

These are the perfect targets of the times, but he never quite hits them on the nose. Case in point, ‘Family Man’, a crude attempt at satire that indicts the author rather than the subject. Its tempting to prescribe an intensive listening course of Dylan, Eminem, Ani DiFranco or whoever the hell, but I suspect all Battle has to do is write more, edit harder and listen to himself.

That said, with My Medicine Wilt have filled full all the promises made by Bastinado – and even The Clash didn’t start to stretch until London Calling. This is good, but I’ll wager there’s better ahead.