Golden Wolf by Dope Lemon – Album Review
By Ellie Victor
By the time Angus Stone slips into the opening track of Golden Wolf, his fifth album as Dope Lemon, you’ve either bought into his sun-drenched dreamworld or you haven’t. This is music that doesn’t plead for attention—it drifts, it lounges, it cools in the back of the room with a half-lidded stare. But that’s the point. This Golden Wolf doesn’t bark; it purrs.
After the more polished, sometimes theatrical musings of Kimosabè (2023), this record feels looser, both in structure and in spirit. There’s a rough charm here, like a linen shirt that hasn’t seen an iron in years. Stone still deals in groove-forward indie-psych, but here it’s more windswept—less Malibu, more Mojave, occupying a curious middle ground between the kaleidoscopic sprawl of Tame Impala and the ambling, laconic charm of Kurt Vile.
The opener, ‘John Belushi’, is a solid start: dusky guitar tones, languid vocals, a nod to chaos wrapped in a shrug. There’s a kind of Fontaines D.C.-lite pulse to it, though it never fully bites. It’s followed by ‘Electric Green Lambo’, a woozy, electric-funk drift through neon smoke. It’s fun—like a glitter-dusted memory of a party you’re not sure you actually attended.
Angus Stone, aka Dope Lemon, 2025
image: Daniel Mayne
“Enough of an edge”
‘She’s All Time’, a standout featuring Nina Nesbitt, is perhaps the album’s most fully-formed offering: dreamy, hooky, just enough of an edge. You can picture the music video now—poolside, slow motion, golden hour. It’s almost too easy, but it works.
But that ease is also the album’s weakness. Golden Wolf is packed with mood, but light on movement. By track six, the shimmer begins to blur. Songs like ‘We Solid Gold’ and ‘On the 45’ have charm—“she likes the wind in her hair / and now she just don’t care” is the kind of lyric you’d scrawl in a sand-dusted journal—but the formula has started to wear thin.
Not that Stone doesn’t throw curveballs. ‘Yamasuki – Yama Yama’ goes somewhere stranger, layering tribal drumlines with unexpected vocal samples. It’s bold. It’s strange. It sort of works. Then there’s ‘Maggie’s Moonshine’, clocking in at over six minutes, with more structure-shifting than most albums attempt in an entire side. It’s groovy, spacey, and just unhinged enough to keep things interesting.
“Could be sharper”
Still, much of Golden Wolf feels more like a vibe than an album. That may be exactly what Stone intended. The title track glides along with windows-down nostalgia. ‘Sugarcat’ flirts with mystery, but ends up more enigmatic than engaging. ‘Dust of a Thousand Stars’, the nearly eight-minute closer, is a swirling instrumental with a spoken word coda that lands with a whisper. It’s beautiful. It’s baffling. It might be brilliant.
Stone’s strength remains his ability to conjure a universe with a single chord. But five albums in, you wonder if the edges could be sharper, the risks a bit riskier. Golden Wolf is content to drift—and drift it does, often gorgeously, but not always memorably.
For longtime fans, it’s another warm dip into the Dope Lemon temple. For newcomers, it might feel like flipping through someone else’s faded photographs. There are glimpses of greatness here—but you might have to squint.
7/10
Ellie has spent over three decades dissecting riffs, rhythms, and rockstar egos, all in pursuit of the perfect review. Her music writing journey began at 12 with a glowing 10/10 diary entry for Echo and the Bunnymen, and she’s been chasing that high ever since. Armed with encyclopaedic knowledge and a soft spot for the sonically daring, Ellie will review anything that’s put in front of her – as long as it’s on vinyl.
