Music Blogs

There's a bitter edge to Tom Fleming's voice tonight when Wild Beasts' less-famous singer jokes about the lack of a stagehand to tune the band's tools. It's always a righteous sight, seeing a band roadieing, but Fleming's isn't an unreasonable request given the year they've had. In their latest (second) album, "Two Dancers", Wild Beasts have a record that's bolder than anything released by their UK peers, garnering mountains of press clippings along the way. Yet, outside of the M25 (and home turf of Cumbria and Leeds) the band are hardly pulling punters to their gigs in droves.

It's fair to say Hayden Thorpe's countertenor is an imposing gate to unlock when facing out of the stereo speakers, so the thought of a raw out-of-studio Thorpe might frighten timid folk, or those who like their voices like they do their crisps: plain. They also have a tendency to saunter onstage looking like the next-generation cast of "Last Of The Summer Wine", as they do tonight, Thorpe donning a natty collection of wool. But if these are reasons cited for a venue remaining only two-thirds full, what a shame.

Tonight the Beasts are on sublime form. Thorpe's classically-approved voice swoops and dips from a high-pitch tweet to sounds more guttural, coming on like both a lunatic and a sweet, wise soul on the elegant, dramatic "Please Sir". His prurient self is allowed out in set-opener "Fun Powder Plot", with the song's incongruous line, "this is a booty call", making sense of the red light the band are bathed in. Elsewhere, Tom Fleming's rich baritone is pure velvet on "All The Kings Men", a less startling, more homespun alternative to the Billy Mackenzie meets Tiny Tim of Thorpe's.

With Chris Talbot propelling the band groovily with click-clack percussion and the guitars wound so taut and wiry, the driving sound - a couple of BPM off tuneful techno - is in danger of snapping. It doesn't, though. That starry, Marr-infused sound of theirs goes on silkily and sharply as they wind their way through "This Is Our Lot", "Two Dancers" and a comically OTT "Hooting & Howling".

Only their hungover bodies, which keep banter to a minimum and cause curtain-closer "Empty Nest" to fizzle out, are marks against them. "We used our day off to get more wasted than usual", says Fleming. "It got to 4pm and we didn't know what to do with ourselves!" If they can win us over in this state then further ears will be charmed... soon.

by Chris Parkin