Ruins (LP)

The brainchild of singer and guitarist Jack Sharp, Wolf People started in 2005 when Sharp recorded a demo album in the English town of Bedford. Named after the children's book Little Jacko and the Wolf People, the band is a throwback to the bluesy psychedelia of Black Sabbath, Cream, Traffic, and early Jethro Tull and Fairport Convention, tackling the sounds of the past with a kind of nostalgic reverence.

The band released a few singles and EPs before pulling off a bit of a coup on the other side of the pond, becoming the first British band to sign to the indie label Jagjaguwar. Wolf People have produced a clutch of releases, including two studio albums Steeple (2010) and Fain (2013), and an alchemical compendium of oddities, curios and musical trinkets, Tidings (2010).

Ruins is Wolf People's new album, and its over-riding theme is that of nature reclaiming the land. The transcendence of life over politics, plants over people. It asks: where are we going and what comes next? If culture is history's narration, then Wolf People are custodians and conduits; electrified sages, if you will.

Recorded in Devon, Isle Of Wight and London, Ruins is their most direct and instinctive work yet, simultaneously reaching back into a fecund past to tell us who we are today, while harnessing the power of modern technology and ideas to ponder unknown futures. Lyrically, Ruins imagines how the planet might appear when society has finally fallen to dust and ash, and the creeping vines and nettles have reclaimed the land. It is the product of letting go of conceit, contrivance and, indeed, a career plan.