Wild Beasts reviewed
Wild Beasts
Limbo, Panto
(Domino)
It takes special circumstances to make the music public pine for hyper-literate, ultra-confident, flamboyant, British art-school types — but that’s the angular, post punk world we inhabit.
Wild Beasts are the bearers of glad tidings, bringing back Orange Juice, The Smiths, and Squeeze wrapped in Hayden Thorpe’s threshold-testing, looping falsetto. Limbo, Panto is an audacious mix that, love or hate, compels you to listen and see where it leads. It takes a confident band to print lyrics like these, but the Beasts hold up whether lamenting a can’t-win local football squad (“Woebegone Wanderers”), Morrissey-styled dependency (“She Purred, While I Grrred”), and genteel personality crises (“The Club Of Fathomless Love”) — of course, that’s if you get that far. Thorpe’s singing voice recalls an Anthony Hegarty who’s all drama club but no drama class. He serenades, groans, and spits with it while daring you to turn him off and miss what’s coming next. (And for the lawyers watching over Gang Of Four’s copyrights, what’s coming is a good night’s sleep.)
— Steve Forstneger
