Sal Klita Blogger's Best Album for 2009
In a day where Hot Topic peddles guyliner to millions of male teenage mallrats, it's hard to imagine a time when glam-rock was truly shocking. But there remains one gender-bending device whose provocative, polarizing power remains undiminished: the falsetto-- a sound that tends to elicit both laughter and skepticism, if not outright hostility. Still, it remains a highly effective weapon in the endless war against safe, overly earnest indie-- and few bands brandish it so wantonly as UK art-pop quartet Wild Beasts.
On the band's striking 2008 debut, Limbo, Panto, frontman Hayden Thorpe unleashed his shrill, glass-shattering shrieks as a means to project both the vulnerability and depravity of his sexually frustrated protagonists, and he didn't care if he went hoarse in the process (you can practically hear his vocal cords disintegrate on the galloping single "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants"). Perhaps as a means to avoid chronic laryngitis, on follow-up Two Dancers he's deferring more frequently to bassist Tom Fleming, a deeper-voiced foil in the Nick Cave crooner mold. But that's just a surface indication of the transformation Wild Beasts have undergone in the past year-- in contrast to the first album's fidgety, impulsive baroque'n'roll, Two Dancers sees Wild Beasts refashioned as a steely art-funk outfit that's no less alluring in its austerity.
Granted, some old horny habits die hard-- we're not two verses into album opener "The Fun Powder Plot" before Thorpe hollers, "This is a booty call! My boot, my boot, my boot, my boot up your asshole." But his words feel less outrageous and much more ominous when set against the song's metronomic groove and melancholic jangle-- pulse-tempering measures that keep the cheekiness in check. Likewise, first single "Hooting and Howling" benefits from a patient, linear build that transforms the song from a quiet trill into a heart-racing anthem, with Thorpe's circular vocal and guitar lines burrowing the melody well into memory before the first chorus is out.
Fans of Limbo, Panto's chandelier-swinging flamboyance may be less enthused with Two Dancers' more organized presentation, but it allows Wild Beasts to better achieve their singular balance of aristocracy and anarchy: the debonair funk of "We Still Got the Taste Dancin' on Our Tongues" speaks of class warfare under the serious moonlight ("Us kids are cold and cagey rattling around the town/ Scaring the oldies into their dressing gowns/ As the dribbling dogs howl"), while the two-part title track suite finds Fleming sharing a grim, first-person account of some horrible attack before the song erupts in a tribal, psychedelic surge. He could very well be talking about a public stoning in the 15th century or a gang rape from last week-- and it's not even entirely clear if he's singing from a male or female perspective-- but the lack of specificity makes the transgressions described all the more unsettling, as if they could happen to anyone.
Wild Beasts certainly aren't the first rock band to stand up society's dregs and outcasts, but few others immortalize them on such a wondrous, mythic scale. And in the grand "This Is Our Lot"-- the sort of song everyone wants Radiohead's perpetually imminent "return to rock" to sound like-- we quite literally have an anthem for the ages. Over top a rubbery bassline and shimmering guitar riff, Thorpe tips his tipple to the enduring passion of youth: "We find ourselves dancing late/ Like young reprobates/ By the milky light of the mighty moon/ Find someone to nuzzle you/ And waltz from the room." Of course, come sunrise, those kids will have to clean themselves up and get to work on time. And perhaps the more accessible approach of Two Dancers suggests a greater willingness on Wild Beasts' part to interact with the straight world. But for them, every night is still a full moon-- and when it comes, Thorpe will be ready to howl.
— Stuart Berman for Pitchfork, August 31, 2009
— Home
posted by S-a-l K-l-i-t-a B-l-o-gg-e-r @ 7:09 PM
