Whatever else Noisettes may be, they don’t appear to be particularly fast workers. Even though they’ve had three years since the Three Moods of the Noisettes EP came out, they still reprise half of the EP on their first full-length, What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?, which arrived on US shores last week (though it’s been available in the UK since February). I suppose there’s something to be said for sticking with what works, but they’re still only averaging three new songs a year at that rate.

Anyway, any discussion of Noisettes’ music has to begin with the striking instrument that is Shingai Shoniwa’s voice. Half Peggy Lee and half Yoshimi P-WE, Shoniwa almost has to be heard to be believed, but as affectation-laced as her vocals can be, they convey a ferocious intensity. It’s bracing and furious and at least halfway unhinged, but it’s also quite refreshing. Even if they’ve opened for Babyshambles and the Bloc Party, it’s hard to accuse Shoniwa or the rest of the Noisettes of being anything but honest.

Intense, actually, is a pretty good word for the band’s sound in general. It’s based firmly in the sort of garage-rock revivalism made popular by the White Stripes and the Hives, but with generous dollops of both noise-rock and neo-soul. If that sounds like a bizarre combination, that’s because it is, but it’s held together both by passion and restraint. There’s a lot of white space at the edges of Noisettes’ sound. Although they’re usually loud, the arrangements are a good deal less busy than one might expect, and it’s this lack of excess that makes Noisettes really interesting.

The album certainly starts off with a bang. “Don’t Give Up” features a savage guitar line, a primal beat, and Shingai Shoniwa’s searing vocals. It’s like party music for the damned. After the ragged but catchy “Scratch Your Name,” the band turns down the amps and picks up the acoustic guitars for “The Count of Monte Cristo.” It plays kind of like a stripped-down Helicopter Girl — until it makes a left turn into a hypnotic, swirling guitar outro that would make Yo La Tengo proud.

The record never quite gets as brilliant as that three-song sequence again, though the rest of it is still very good. Some of the noisier songs on the second half stray perhaps a bit too far away from the rock side of the equation, and that’s why I can’t give it a full 9/10. But it’s an exciting album, and one that bodes well for the rest of Noisettes’ career. Assuming, you know, that they bother to write any more songs.

Release Date: Feb. 5, 2007
Label: Vertigo
Rating: 8.5/10

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