Wild Beasts - Limbo, Panto (Album)
» Wild Beasts announce Laneway sideshows - November 20, 2009
The ABC’s Rage program is a sensational source for finding new music. We all know that. Unfortunately, the time one generally watches it isn’t conducive to remembering things. One morning I woke up with vague memories of a band called Wild Beasts that I had seen at some undeterminable hour the night before. I then promptly forgot about them. Fortunately, I have had an opportunity to reacquaint myself and I can see why they stuck in my chemically inconvenienced memory.
Wild Beasts are a band like no other. They have a lead singer, Hayden Thorpe, that sounds like a cross between Freddie Mercury and Tiny Tim, and a band which pumps out calypso-like cruise ship stylings in the background. Chief single, The Devil’s Crayon, is a sharp, original piece of peculiar pop, yet the key to its success is the orthodox vocals. Elsewhere, as Thorpe’s voice flies higher and higher in a ridiculous falsetto, the tunes, as clever and original as they are, really begin to grate. Now I have no problem with a bit of falsetto. In fact I love it. The really smooth music of the late-70s, early 80s was built around it. A time when men were men, men wore knits, and they sung hiiiiiiiigh. People like Jeff Lynne and Peter Cetera. They weren’t scared to grace the upper octaves. And I don’t mean in a Queensryche power-screech way, but I mean a soulful and smooth, turtleneck knit-wearing way. Yet this is different. For one it’s not smooth, and two, it is unrelenting. Syllable after syllable, track after track he is striking fear into glass-blowing factories.
No doubt Wild Beasts are good, really good. But I defy anyone to listen to this album all the way through in a sitting. It’s gold, it’s annoying, and it’s original. Hear more than Devil’s Crayon before you decide to buy this one.
