Wild Beasts

This is a band that is not just wild but almost completely feral. Imagine seeing a cat walking towards you – at first glance it is a normal family pet but instead of a normal ‘meow’ when it opens its mouth it howls like a wolf. Hailing from the wilds of the lake district this most British of bands are actually giving yank upstarts like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver a run for their money in the romantic haunting pop stakes, except they have also included a large dollop of odd. So instead of the northern brag-indie their name suggests, ‘Limbo, Panto’ explodes with Anthony Heggarty vocals, funk, folk, skiffle and confusion.

Beginning with the superbly titled ‘Vigil For A Fuddy Duddy’ and moving at a brisk pace through ‘Woebegone Wanderers’ to ‘She Purred While I Grrred’ the album is a lesson in brilliantly inventive song titles and strangely bizarre lyrics. From the David Shrigley style of: “Please be wary / The beautiful man’s hat is dark and scary” to standout track ‘Please Sir’ with its endearingly naïve chorus of: “Take these chips with cheese as an offering of peace, please sir", there is a pleasingly worn and familiar feel to much of their subject matter but rarely has a song about a fight after the pub or the local bottom division football team seemed so thrillingly removed from most people’s daily existence.

Made up of Hayden Thorpe on guitar and lead vocals, Tom Flemming on bass and backing (but equally astounding) vocals, Ben Little on lead guitar and Chris Talbot on drums, the Beasts look strangely innocuous in the flesh. There have been several suggestions as to where they got their name, from Milton to 20th century art movement the Fauvists, all equally highbrow, and all demonstrating just how seriously people take this music. Here is a band that sings about sitting on the devil’s shoulder and seems to embody Warren Zevon spliced with the mentality of a Victorian collector, songs and their subjects are put on display, if you can make out the lyrics, as curios and objects of sheer joy. If they had been around in the Middle Ages they would have been drowned as witches.

‘Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants’ is about as close to a self portrait as this band get (in the title at least), it is certainly one of the most accessible and pop led tracks present, hinting heavily that this band are far more than a one trick pony. With its ramshackle rhythms and sheer danceability it is hard not to sing along to Thorpe’s falsetto pleadings “Race me, race me.” Sadly at the moment Wild Beasts are in a race of their own, and long may it continue.