Wild Thing

Few recordings carry the weight of cultural mythology the way this one does, and yet when you strip away everything that's been layered onto it, the original is still startling in its simplicity. The central guitar riff is three notes, essentially — a primitive hook that shouldn't work for three and a half minutes but somehow does, because there's a hypnotic inevitability to it, like a chant or a dare. Reg Presley's voice is the key: deep, unhurried, deliberately flat in places, with a quality that sounds almost accidental and is entirely intentional. He sounds like he's speaking to someone directly across a room, not performing for a crowd. The rhythm is loping and slightly off-kilter, giving the track a loose-hipped swagger that was worlds away from the precision of contemporary pop production. Lyrically it's an open invitation — guileless, almost absurdly direct — and that guilelessness is what gives it staying power. This is a song from the margins of the British Invasion, from a Wiltshire band without the London cachet, and it carries that outsider energy. It sounds best on a warm evening through a car window, or at the beginning of something you're not sure you're ready for.