Fortunately, I've had some tip top music around to help soothe this unaccountable yearning for ye olde land of uk. Wild Beasts to be precise, a band whose singular debut Limbo Panto emerged last year as a sharp rebuttal to those who had* grown disenchanted with the state of British rock. Although singer Hayden Thorpe’s idiosyncratic style (read: raging falsetto) turned off as many as it attracted**, everyone pretty much agreed that this was a band that held in abundance that most elusive of musical attributes: originality.
The lads seem to have benefited enormously from the intervening year of touring, riding the wave of creative energy to produce with their second album a trimmer, darker and sleeker beast. Two Dancers dispels any anxiety that Limbo may have been a simple aberration from business as usual (i.e. Muse), fizzing with creative bouyancy.
Much of the theatricality that characterised the debut has been toned down, resulting in a leaner record that benefits from a more focused sense of purpose. Which for Wild Beasts simply means that the high drama of say ‘Woeboegone Wanderers’ has been shed in favour of the clear hooks and shimmering mesh of guitars of ‘The Devil’s Crayon’.
This isn’t to say that they’ve lost their sense of humour, opener ‘The Fun Powder Plot’ setting the tone with teasingly nonchalant irony. The band’s lyrical sensibility has continued to develop in a direction that is socially aware as well as being unequivocally English – the kind of Englishness that combines pills, lads and… well, Essex, with green fields, historical references and Marmite. Take this from the stellar ‘Hooting and Howling’ for instance:
We’re just brutes bored in our bovver boots, we’re just brutes clowning round in cahoots
We’re just brutes looking for shops to loot, we’re just brutes hopin’ to have a hoot
Thorpe’s at times almost agonised cry at once expressing helplessly detached observation and intimate identification, while enjoying a sly dig at the tabloids.
It’s also a fine example of the increased danceability quotient on display this time round, thanks to the unyielding, yet strangely buoyant, propulsion provided by the watertight unit of drummer Chris Talbot, guitarist Ben Little and bassist Tom Fleming. The latter again shares vocal duties with the effervescent Thorpe, his resonant baritone providing an almost welcome respite on the charming ‘All The King’s Men’, as well as on the bleak couplet ‘Two Dancers I’ and ‘II’ that form the thematic core of the album.
The band’s theatrical side is given room to breathe on ‘Underbelly’, while the sole line of ‘When I’m Sleepy’ is inflated into a simmering, lascivious groove, complete with a guitar scrunch that mimics with surprising authenticity the sound an adult giraffe produces during the heat of coitus***.
Ahem. In summary, Two Dancers is quite grand: joyful, sober and a little bit cheeky, it bubbles with musical creativity and as such, should be listened to by everyone.
Other nice things include: 'Exposure' – Peasant; 'The Kirwan Song' – The Amazing; avocado on rye toast with salt, pepper and a dribbling of balsamic vinegar
* justly
** not unlike gorgonzola
*** do not enquire as to how I know this
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