Wild Beasts
Domino Records
(2009)
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The Wild Beasts’ debut album Limbo, Panto introduced listeners to lead singer Hayden Thorpe’s gliding falsetto, which sounds like it would be more well-adapted to a concert theater than rock venue. His range is undoubtedly impressive, but the rest of the band too delivers their operatic flourishes in music that is ornamental without seeming foppish. Two Dancers scales back on the band’s more baroque leanings and offers a tighter offering in terms of sound and lyricism. Their thematic eroticism, in the form of booty calls, puckered lips, machine-like bodies and dim-lit streets, is a constant in the new record, and the resulting work is a collection of beautifully composed tableaus that follow a disjunctive narrative. The music is well-suited for nighttime and rainy days. There is something to the vocal work and instrumentation, which is an oddly pleasant baroque take on a New Wave sound, that creates a seamless record altogether. The two renditions of “Two Dancers” are essentially the same song performed with a different set of moods — one loud and upbeat and the other quiet and contemplative. Sounds of beating drums, vibrant-sounding bass and the full male vocal range of the band’s falsetto, tenor and baritone singers give an otherwise industrial-sounding set of songs an epic and operatic feel. The songs here are literate and emotive without pretense and decor, and while Thorpe’s falsetto still takes on absurd peaks, Two Dancers has the band holding back and revealing its sound with more subtlety and greater build-ups.

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http://www.wild-beasts.co.uk/

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