It's a bit like we're looking at them through a fishing net

Wild Beasts
Two Dancers

If you’ve never heard of British band Wild Beasts before, take heed of their second album, the charismatic Two Dancers, on Domino Records. Produced in a remote part of Norfolk earlier this year, the Cumbrian boys’ follow up to Limbo, Panto, will take you on an audacious journey through the wilderness of love; passion, craving and youth. Hailing from such a place might have much to do with the bands knack for story telling with coos, squeals and howls of the wild, and their name alone invokes images of mystery and wonder.

‘The Fun Powder Plot’ opens the record with steady African drum-beats and soft plucky, Oriental guitar sounds. Once Hayden Thorpe’s shocking falsetto starts its clear his voice has that marmite factor, new listeners may be unsure as to whether it is a man or a woman singing at first, and might be the reason why the band is still relatively unknown. But stick with it as this is part of Wild Beasts charm. The ten intriguing songs expose Thorpe’s extraordinary talent to scale across octaves so charmingly and sensually it’s hard not to like this album – think Jeff Buckley’s elegance, with the softness of Antony Hegarty and the flare of Grace Jones.

First released single ‘Hooting and Howling’ is a good example of Thorpe’s shifting voice as he does exactly what the track is called. Jazzy hooplas and tinkering keyboard build up tension, and continuous beats roll under lustfully strung sentences of fighting and looting. ‘All The King’s Men’ is a refreshing little number with an upbeat tempo. Full of cocky, breathless mating calls, ‘Watch me! Watch me!’ this is a chanting ode to The Seven Dwarfs, if all the lads were heading to town on a Friday night to pursue women rather than gold. Nineties Garbage-esque guitar cuts and crawls over ‘When I’m Sleepy…’ like a wailing elephant on a rampage in the jungle and the headstrong teenage angst of ‘We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues’ sucks you in with delightful lyrics like “we pucker up our lips are bee-stung,” daring you to play it again and again. “What’s so wrong with just a little fun?” Thorpe croons – nothing when excitement sounds like crackling electric guitar washed with soft piano.

Wild Beasts – Hooting & Howling

Intoxicating ‘Two Dancers (i)’ champions the voice of bassist Tom Fleming who sinisterly sings about being passed round “like a piece of meat”. Guitars slink across this track with rumbling beats and part two’s chiming melody makes you stop and listen to the words, “O, do you want my heart between your teeth?” If dancing be the substitute for sex, then this record is littered with it. “By the milky light of the mighty moon,” ‘This Is Our Lot’ is a little gem of salsa rhythm; tin tingling beats and swinging guitar, these reprobates “heavy with hops” want to nuzzle and waltz you. Thorpe’s calls of “my darling, my dumpling, my plump heart a’ thumping” are so sugary sweet it leaves you panting.

The menacing ‘Underbelly,’ pulsating with keyboards, abruptly stops and crashes into ‘Empty Nest,’ and you wonder if you’ve missed something. But Wild Beasts haven’t burned out with their chanting, plinky plonky ending; it leaves you wanting more. Two Dancers should be listened to in full, again and again, to experience the full heady trip of jumbled words and dream-like music. A mouth-wateringly seductive offering from Wild Beasts.

Two Dancers is out on 3rd August via Domino

By Kristina Georgiou