First Listen: Wild Beasts, Smother

If you’re anything like us, news of an impending Wild Beasts album means dropping the pretence that you actually care about other kinds of so-called ‘music’, hurling your sense of decorum out the window along with your dignity, and slavering  like a rabid dog about what is bound to be the best thing that’s happened since sliced bread. Not that we’re biased or anything. But anyway, let’s dance awhile with record number three from the Cumbrian quartet, shall we? It’s called Smother, and it’s out on May 9 through Domino.

‘Lion’s Share’

Making its entrance with throbbing synths and a graceful, slightly dizzy-making piano line, this one opens the record in the sort of atmospheric fashion ‘The Fun Powder Plot’ did with the last one. There’s an implied, galloping beat that runs throughout but which never kicks in. “It’s a terrible scare, but that’s why the dark is there / so you don’t have to see what you can’t bear, the lion’s share”, muses co-frontman Hayden Thorpe, before wingman Tom Fleming picks up the baton: “boy, what you running from?” There’s a sense that, if on Two Dancers the band appeared ‘equally elegant and ugly’, now they’re four parts the former to one part the latter.

‘Bed of Nails’

This one’s carried by a propulsive groove from sticksman Chris Talbot, and a deeply romantic, peachy chorus from Hayden: “I would lie anywhere with you / any old bed of nails would do”. I guess that’s the Wild Beasts equivalent of ‘swimming the ocean blue’. Literary trainspotters will also note Hayden pining lustily after his Ophelia (or ‘OOH-OH-Ophelia, as he pronounces it) on the bridge here. It’s a big pop moment, but there’s no bells-and-whistles accompaniment or ‘catchy’ signifiers to help you arrive at the conclusion; all is placed at the altar of shimmering texture. A great tune in any case, and their most nakedly groove-oriented cut to date.

‘Deeper’

Shit! Damn! Motherfucker! Step forward as the band’s D’Angelo, Tom Fleming. A crackling slow jam with beautifully accented percussion, this sensual number appears to double up as a mission statement for Wild Beasts v3.0 and beyond: “I have to know how it feels and I am not afraid / this is the house we built, all else falls away,” or, even more thrillingly, “deeper, deeper / dare we put our tongues to the flames?”. It’s full-on make-out music, this, featuring some gorgeous vocal interplay between Tom and Hayden.

‘Loop the Loop’

Elliptical, folksy fingerpicking from Ben Little and just a heart murmur of percussion presage this lyrical curveball from Hayden: “Oh, don’t you think that people are the strangest things?”. Roger that. This is as velvet milkshake-y smooth as Vini Reilly doing Tears For Fears… or something. “I’ve made enough enemies,” croons Hayden resignedly, before a coda instructing us to “forget now, how many must die, how many must die, how many die” quietly ushers in yet more gorgeousness, making even Two Dancers seem all fingers and thumbs by comparison.

‘Plaything’

The one off the teaser clip with the petals falling upwards. Again, a heavy snare/kick pattern from Chris, with menacing bits in between. “New squeeze, take off your chemise, and I’ll do, oh, as I please,” sings Hayden, getting all predatory on our asses, swittching to a gritted-teeth falsetto to announce that “you’re my plaything, you’re my plaything / yet I’m wondering, I’m wondering how cruel I’ve been”. Again, he seems to be rummaging ‘round the unsavoury recesses of the male sexual psyche here, coming up with a creepy winner in the process. I’m sure if he has a girlfriend, she’ll be absolutely FINE with all of this.

‘Invisible’

“I see our enemies, I see them on their knees / crawling across the floor / you kill ‘em all”. He’s not shy of a bold lyrical gambit, is Tom. Recalls the fascination with post-rock texture that surfaced on ‘Two Dancers I & II’. But infinitely more restful-sounding than that, with cushioning piano chords and, unusually, a horn noodling pleasantly somewhere off in the middle background.

‘Albatross’

Sensual and balletic, much in the vein of serial band reference point the Junior Boys, this one’s underpinned by acoustic guitar and twinkling piano. “I blame you for all of those things I’ve been through,” sings Hayden, before telling us not to feel bad anyway. Bit late for that, isn’t it?

‘Reach A Bit Further’

A very Wild Beastian groove, with what sounds like pots and pans being smacked in metronomic fashion as a melody that evokes Radiohead doing ‘Careless Whisper’ makes its soulful presence felt. “I was crude, I was nude, I was rude, I was not in the mood,” laments Hayden rhymily. Tom slips in and out of the track to announce that “I will do all the things that you ask of me” in genius fashion. Seriously, why haven’t they swapped verses like this before? This could be the beginning of a beautiful bromance. Amazing stuff.

‘Burning’

On which the band puts its love affair with the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never to great use, Tom sing-speaking lines inspired by TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ over what sounds like a synthetic recreation of harps left to play themselves on a hillside: “I’m saved, you pulled my fingers off the dirt, you plucked me wriggling from the world / I’m saved, you cast me open to the wind, you shook my body from the skin”. Sterling work from the more consciously artsy of the Beasties’ frontmen here.

‘End Come Too Soon’

The band rounds things out in time-honoured, ‘live set closer’ fashion. Sounds ‘post-rock pop’, in a ‘Spanish Sahara’ kind of way. Stately drums, haunting piano/guitar work and heavenly vocals manipulated into fragments in Nico Muhly-esque fashion. At the halfway mark this journeys into Tim Hecker-like, abstract territory for a couple of minutes, before exploding into life with an ecstatic series of ‘ee-eh-o’s from Hayden. You do know what an ‘ee-eh-o’ is, right? Nearing climax, he gives a familiar internal monologue for men the world over a coolly metaphysical twist: “Don’t come too soon, end come too soon, it’s too soon, the end it come too soon!” Which is a good way to end a record, you have to admit.

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There we have it, then. Not as initially grabby as its predecessor, perhaps, but Smother is a swimmingly beautiful fine-tuning of the Two Dancers template, lyrically dealing with the bonds that break and bind people together. Or at least, we think it does. And if that’s bugger all use, the title sums up the sound more succinctly than we could ever hope to.

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