Secret Meeting score: 88
by Joss Croasdale
Formed in Kendal in 2002 and with five studio albums to their name, the band have no doubt enjoyed a moderately successful career. However, when faced with the question as to just why Wild Beasts have never quite managed to capture the attention of alternative music fans across the board, I’m left scratching my head.
Wild Beasts were a band that without doubt ticked all the appropriate boxes required to make them a success. With an ear for crafting ambitious sounding songs, they were undoubtedly accomplished musicians – represented impeccably through both their live performances and studio work. Plus, and maybe most importantly, they had a label (Domino) known for their support in developing young bands and who should have been more than capable of elevating them further.
But, none of this propelled them beyond being a band with not much more than cult following. Their final album, Last Night All My Dreams Came True (a collection of live songs recorded at RAK Studios), was released last week to minimal fanfare, and even their farewell tour seems to have gone under the radar- with a handful of modest shows and the overall sense that they’ve just fizzled out after a 16-year career.
Two Dancers, however, released in 2009, was an album crammed with ambitious and mature alternative song writing. And its lewd lyrics, unusual rhythms, hypnotic bass licks and layer upon layer of delicate sounds, made each and every song on the album an enjoyable and interesting listen.
The album’s opener, The Fun Powder Plot, sets the tone for the rest of the record. Synths sound out before a melodic, enchanting bass enters and this, coupled with percussive drum patterns, lock together into a mesmerising groove. Thorpe’s bawdy lyrics epitomised, ‘this is a booty call, my boot, my boot, my boot up your asshole’.
All the Kings Men is probably the record’s most recognised track, showing off the vocal dynamic within the band. A ‘call and response’ sequence between both vocalists, with Thorpe singing theatrical falsetto, gives the song undoubted character.
Two Dancers (i) opens with plucked guitars, saturated in reverb, before layers are introduced in the form of drums, bass, synths, and secondary guitar licks. The song builds, creating a frantic tension before settling into a haunting climax of stripped back atmospheric sounds and vocal howls.
The band’s hard work on this album didn’t fall completely on deaf ears. It received a Mercury Music Prize nomination and featured on many end-of-year album lists – each of which were deserved acknowledgements of the band’s hard work. But sadly, it did not receive the commercial success it deserved – limping into the UK album chart at number 68.
So why didn’t more people take notice? Maybe they never quite fit into a particular scene, which left them isolated in the sense that they didn’t crossover into others – notably the indie/punk movement they just missed and the nu-rave scene they preceded. Or, could it be that the individuals making up the audiences at Wild Beasts’ gigs were mostly musicians themselves who had a keen appreciation and ear for the band’s technical detail, which may have been lost on your casual indie/alternative listener?
Had it been a simple case of timing, perhaps at some point in the future a ‘Wild Beasts’ void will be filled by a whole new breed of bands citing Wild Beasts as an influence? But despite the remaining hardcore followers that were in attendance for Wild Beasts’ farewell shows this week, it seems the general consensus is that they just simply did not cross over to capture the imaginations of the masses. And for me it is very much a case of, as the final track on 2011’s Smother sadly foreboded, End Come Too Soon.
