Our chosen track was 'Vagabond' a song from the band Wolfmother. This band was categorised under Heavy Metal/Rock, however we felt as a group that the individual song itself was potentially an indie/pop song. We though this because the sound of the song itself was upbeat and didn't show any heavy metal/rock aspects. More interestingly, the song 'Vagabond' is commonly recognised by its use in the film 500 Days of Summer, which is a romance/comedy themed film.
Wolfmother range in style to an extent that their album cover (for our chosen track Vagabond) has a historical meaning behind it. The image seen on the album cover is taken from 'The Sea Witch' by Frank Frazetta, it shows a nymph standing against a blue/orange sky, with the 'Wolfmother' title overlapping the image.
How do their products appeal to a target audience ?
Their store is still under construction and at this current time they're only promoting their concert tickets. However, fan-made t-shirts, wristbands, banners, scrapbooks and posters are all over the Internet - all of which will appeal to their target audience, not only because its what the audience has made themselves, but because it demonstrates the passion for the band by wearing a t-shirt with Wolfmothers brand name on it. Wolfmother's web page also has dedicated pages to the live tours, showing energetic pictures of the mass audience holding banners - and to enhance the acknowledgement of their genre, the pictures are in black and white and slightly faded so give a 'worn' olden feel to it. This could perhaps indicate their passion for classical rock and tradition.
Wolfmother have spread across different social networking websites to distribute their band and music. Popular websites like YouTube and Facebook are unofficial distributors that spread work about bands and artists fast and freely, gaining fan bases and discussion blogs. This is a free and effective method of promotion and will also help the band see first-hand who their target audiences and how they respond to the band's music/updates.
Wolfmother had many lines of inspiration, mainly from other bands in the same genre category or similar, such 60's groups like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Avalanches, Radiohead and Kings of Leon - also 70's rock bands such as Uriah Heep, Black Sabbath and Australian bands like AC/DC. Observing different bands helps a band understand where among them they want to be placed, and therefore they can gain inspiration and have an idea what style they want to follow and how to accomplish band identity.
Wolfmother have unique album covers that give off somewhat 'olden day' or 'medieval' time periods to the audience, but to support these views, the tracks that Wolfmother perform are slightly Jazz and classical rock to give off an 'olden day' approach to the song. This can be for a number of reasons, but personally I feel like the band is trying to strip back fame and fortune and go back to traditional rock bands where it was about the quality of the music, rather than conforming to a conventional image. The album cover is giving away the genre from its dark and mysterious nature, which somehow draws the audience in.
Their font is oddly like Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto album's font, except Wolfmother has sharper corners and dark/white filling to ensure that there is no confusion on their genre - heavy metal / rock. This font however, is called 'Apple Tree' and consists in thick representative blocks that symbolise each letter. Also similarly to Coldplay, Wolfmother have used bright rainbow-styled effects to go against traditional rock conventions and have their own distinctive style.
Wolfmother, similarly to LMFAO have used the artist' hair styles (Afro's) as an icon to promote their band. Obviously, both bands contrast in genre and representation, but methods of style and iconography are similar and have helped brand their band name.
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