Wolfmother @ Fletcher's Bar, April 12th

This band is a three-headed beast. Huge riffs. Thundering drums. They are quickly outgrowing these small venues. Last night wasn't sold out, but they played like it was. They are sharper and harder than the last time I saw them, and I can only imagine what they will do to the Black Cat in June.

They ripped through all of the hits. I want to say the first three tracks went "Dimension," "Pyramid," and then "White Unicorn." I can't say for sure, though, I bumped into an old friend at Fletcher's, Mr. Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can. They played all of the standout tracks on their self-titled debut that will land stateside in May: the first three I mentioned, "Woman," "Colossal," "Apple Tree" and "Mind's Eye." They also played a track off of their recent EP, DIMENSIONS, called "Love Train," and it is probably the most Zeppelin-esque track in their catalog. A slight difference between this set and the one I saw in Brooklyn was that they ripped through the initial set, retired back stage, and then came out to close with "Joker & The Thief." I guess you know you are headed in the right direction when you graduate to encores. Great stuff. "Joker" sounded excellent and blew the crowd away.

People love to make references like "these guys sound like 25% White Stripes, 25% Black Sabbath, 45% Led Zeppelin, and 5% Australian sorcery sprinkled with frog warts. Here's the deal: this band kills live, their CD is amazing, their EP is great, and they are going to annihilate Coachella and anything that comes before or after it.

They have a huge live presence, that rare knack for performing great live without too many theatrics, simply letting the power of the music speak for itself. You are crazy if you disagree and you are crazy if you dismiss this band as a ripoff of the Stripes, Sabbath, or Zep. It is hard to find great music that doesn't sound at least a little bit like something else. The same way you can hear Robert Johnson in a Led Zep riff, you hear the Stripes in "Apple Tree." It is the great thing about music, Zeppelin may be gone, but you have young firestarters like Wolfmother that carry on the tradition of hard, pulsepounding rock 'n roll paired with mystical lyrics about jokers, thiefs, white unicorns and gnomes. Go check these guys out for yourself. You can't help but put your fist in the air to a song like "Woman."

Watch the video to "Dimensions" here.