Wild Beasts / Hoxton Hall, London

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Reviews

wildbeaststwo

Far more than two dancers at Wild Beasts show in aged surroundings.

Words Luke Turner

Photograph David Ma

If the Grade II cast iron pillars and drapes of the Hoxton Hall could speak, what stories of infamy they would tell? This Victorian music hall was opened in 1863, but it had its licence revoked eight years later following police complaints about the behaviour of its clientele. One imagines devious top-hatted coves lurking on the balconies paying more attention to the pockets of gents distracted by rouged dames flirting for a sovereign than what was happening on-stage.

It’s the perfect setting, then, for this intimate celebration of the release of Wild Beasts’ new album, Two Dancers. That’s not to say that in this context Wild Beasts are reduced to evocations of past times; soundtracking a building, if you will. Their sound is too current, and too unlike anything else for that. Instead, tonight’s venue accentuates what’s already present on Two Dancers: an atmosphere that’s at once louche and camp, euphoric and dark, entirely instinctive and sensual, a mist of hormones delivered in sonic form.

These album launches, packed with industry coves, can be static, joyless affairs, but this cloud of whatever it is isn’t just making the two pulchritudinous dames down the front gyrate enticingly, it’s sending waves of movement out through the crowd. Over yonder it even looks as if Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood is partaking in a wiggle.

Who could resist? Wild Beasts worked quietly for this, but they’ve worked hard, with barely a break from recording or touring since their Limbo, Panto debut last year. And it shows - one of the things that’s been so refreshing about Two Dancers is the increasing ease with which the four members play together. Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto might garner the most praise (and objection), but it’s how it interacts with Tom Fleming’s deeper tones, and how they both sit over the scratchy, percussive guitar from Ben Little and Chris Talbot’s understated backbeat that give Wild Beasts such life, and sends us out into wet London streets with, to borrow from the Kendal boys, the taste still dancin’ on our tongues.