Cosmic Egg

There isn't a boring moment--when's the last time you could say that about an album with Cosmic in the title?

Despite the classic rock pastiche, Cosmic Egg somehow manages to strike a balance between being a carbon copy of a legendary rock album and a tribute to an era--call them the Quentin Tarantino of hard rock.

Cosmic Egg [is] a mature sophomore effort, particularly if it's just judged on all the sonic textures Wolfmorther serves up, but as the album closes with a series of meandering mysticism it's hard not to miss Stockdale's previous reliance on nasty repetitive riffs.

The resultant record should reinforce Wolfmother’s eclectic big-tent fanbase while simultaneously shoring up their odd teleological balancing act.

Some tunes are catchier than others.

This is no groundbreaking piece of art; it's not innovative, it's unashamedly backwards looking, and it rips off the greats to high heaven. It's also bloody awful for a significant amount of its running time. However, when it does work, it's a great thing.

Wolfmother 2.0 are as retro as before, at least there's a refreshing variety to the bludgeoning. [Nov 2009, p.115]

What thesy have done is make the odd generational shift, acknowledging Boston, Steppenwolf, Alice In Chains and The White Stripes in their search for the ultimate cosmic-blues groove, which on 'In The Morning,' they find. [Nov 2009, p.113]

But despite its mining of a bygone age, Cosmic Egg has two clear 21st century counterparts. Far Away and Violence of the Sun are the sort of pristine epics found on Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy., while lysergic piledrivers 10,000 Feet and the title track could easily have appeared on Kasabians' West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. [Dec 2009, p. 96]

Instrumental mastery can provide for some fireworks (particularly on the opening triptych), but spending six minutes in service of sprawling songs with no substance (like most of the album’s middle third) doesn’t do anyone any favors.

Cosmic Egg is the kind of album you'd quite happily pop on for the first part of a road trip while you're full of enthusiasm, but it'd quickly get changed at the first toilet stop.

Much of Cosmic Egg is just that--not-quite-hatched, and in need of sharper claws.

Four years in the making second album from Oz hard rockers.

Cosmic Egg is the sound of a serious lack of invention.