To help fully realise his grandiose dreams on his debut album Suego
Faults, Max McElligott aka Wolf Gang enlisted the help of Dave Fridmann,
producer of Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and MGMT and a man eminently
capable of creating cosmic pop symphonies in his Tarbox Studios in
upstate New York.
“It’s quite a large sound,” considers Max. “There’s a gloriousness to the
production, and a certain ambition.”
McElligott and Fridmann arrived at that sound the hard way: Max
recorded the songs in his bedroom, singing and playing all the parts
himself. He then took those prototype versions to Tarbox, where he and
Fridmann worked up the finished versions together.
Suego Faults is a magnificent collection of accessible, experimental pop. It
is superb songcraft, dexterous musicianship, and florid but not over-fussy
production, for a suite of songs about unrequited love and postapocalyptic paranoia.
His love for older music – particularly Elton John and David Bowie – is
complimented by some more modern day influences he has such as
Grizzly Bear and Arcade Fire – all this combined makes for one very
interesting man whose love for music clearly runs very deep and goes
beyond just writing great jams