Peter Wylie is not an artist who plays it safe. Following the success of Sinful, Wylie returned to his band name of Wah! (dropping the "Mighty" but adding "Mongrel") and created this somewhat difficult, angry album. Whereas on past releases Wylie wrote some very melodic tunes, this is not really the case here. He jams in words much like a rap artist, but this is not rap. This is angry rock & roll. Wylie's guitar work has never sounded so tight and loud, and the vocals are as strong as ever. The overall production is very hard and KLF's presence is felt throughout the songs, but through all of the sound, this is still a Peter Wylie album.
Taking a short break from his decade-long leadership of the Wah! convolutions, Pete Wylie's debut solo album caught him placing the recent eclecticism of the mothership to one side, to concentrate instead on a dance-friendly barrage of hooks and anthems, nailed into place by (among others) producer Zeus B Held -- his recent work with fellow Liverpudlians Dead or Alive certainly informs Wylie's Sinful ambitions, but so does Wah!'s own widescreen epic "Come Back." The middle ground that those two sources settle on is as invigorating as it ought to be.
The opening title track, a Top 20 hit four years before Wylie revisited it with the Farm, lays out the album's stall, a punchy singalong anthem driven by echoing drums, massed-chorale vocals, and throbbing electronics. The insistent urgency with which Wylie can relate the most mundane lyric, too, adds to the effect -- you come out of any one of the album's eight songs convinced that Wylie is wasted in a rock context. He should be conducting the Last Night of the Proms. The epic "Fourelevenfortyfour," the over-excited "Shoulder to Shoulder," and the positively triumphant "All the Love" all add immeasurably to the air of utter grandiosity that surrounds Sinful -- this is not an album for listening to quietly on your Ipod while waiting for a bus. It's one to pipe into the Super Bowl, to drown the sound of "Rock and Roll" beneath its own all-purpose stadium stomp, "We Can Rule the World." And, on this form, Wylie could have.
