One look at the cover of Delta Goodrem's fifth album makes it clear of the record's primal nature. Titled 'Wings of the Wild', Delta, garbed in a cheetah-print dress runs bare-footed alongside a tiger on a desert plain. The allusion to that theme of what it means to be a human being and exploring a person's animal nature is clear all throughout the album, from song titles 'Feline', 'Wings', 'Only Human', to the lyrics with lines like, 'I broke the bars that kept me caged inside, yeah it's my time, to be be the fearless queen out in the wild' and ''There's power in the madness, there is presence in the truth of letting go' (I'm Not Giving Up).
But does the exploration of these ideas make for good listening? Sort of. The better songs on the album are those that are a lot louder and busier than the soft yet powerful ballads that defined her earlier career. Unfortunately there are also more than a few that delve far too into presenting songs that you'd imagine complementing the cover and they just don't work very well. 'Feline', is a good song that builds to the chorus, but lyrically, as you can probably tell from the title, falls short, and the same can be said for 'Encore'. 'Just Call' as a background of what can best be described as jungle-drumming, and again, is lyrically painful: 'And my love said, Ay ay ay ay ay ya, Ay ay ay ay ay ya, I will be here just call my name'.
Delta does manage to successfully capture what one presumes Wings of the Wild was trying to accomplish as an album though at some points. Faster-paced, more-produced and just more brash and confident tracks include 'Wings', 'The River' and 'In the Name of Love'. The biggest surprise of the moment is 'Enough' which features rapper Gizzle who performs the verses of the track and is a drastic change in tone, but still fits perfectly within the themes of the album. Which I suppose is the best way to describe the album. Not all of the tracks are memorable, like 'Only Human', 'Hold On' and 'I'm Not Giving Up', but Delta does enough to try and differentiate them, 'Heavy' being a prime example, in which, again, the last minute and a half of the song drastically changes in tone that it at least makes it for an interesting listen. While the uplifting ballad and second single 'Dear Life' was presumably meant to entice longtime fans the standout song truest to Delta's old music is left for the very end of the album in 'I Believe In A Thing Called Love', which highlights the allure of her as a vocalist and artist, which often got drowned out by the business of everything else the album tried to do.
Goodrem literally and metaphorically threw caution to the wind with 'Wings of the Wild' and while it didn't entirely work it did provide her most enjoyable album since 2004's Mistaken Identity, which is not something too many longtime artists can say about their work.
Rating: 3/5
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