Jul 31 2009 11:22 am,
Wild Beasts
‘Two Dancers’
(Domino)
Remember the goose-pimpled adolescents who appeared in ‘Limbo, Panto’ and their youthful, gratuitous fumblings in the dark? Wild Beasts’ debut was so packed with hormonal exuberance and teen perversion that you half expected a used condom to be stuck to the sleeve. Well, look how they’ve grown. There’s still smut of course; ‘Beasts lyrics are reminiscent of a Canterbury tale; vocalist Hayden Thorpe’s “Freudian slip… my slip in your bits” and “fisticuffing waltz”s are still delivered with bawdy excess, yet such risqué lyricism is now imbedded in music of far more expanse and maturity. The sharp, previously clean ringing, guitars are now drenched in reverb; spacious instead of claustrophobic – the title track even delves into post-rock territory as the group drift into nocturnal fantasy. Thorpe’s falsetto shriek, meanwhile, has been sensualised into something of poise and fragility. Yet, compare this with the funk grooves of percussion and bass underneath Tom Fleming’s unerring tenor tones on album highlight ‘All The King’s Men’; ‘Two Dancers’ still provides the giddiness of the party, but now they deliver the ensuing hangover, too. Such balance epitomises a well-rounded album that’s as easy on the ears as Wild Beasts lyrical caricatures aim to appear on the eyes. It’s just this that time they may not quite be so wild.
Simon Jay Catling
