There’s a thing about really great bands – their success often follows a rather predictable path. First come the critics, then the contemporaries and finally the masses (Jools Holland’s approval inevitably falls somewhere in between).
I’ve been to every performance Love Em Or Hate Em Brit foursome Wild Beasts have given on our fair shores. They wooed me on their first trip Westward when they played support to The Maccabees in 2008; second time round at this year’s Oxegen festival they made a rather more confident impression on an “intimate” crowd made up of myself, himself from Friendly Fires, himself from Foals and a smattering of confused punters.
Tonight, as I wait for the stargazing young innovators to hit the stage, a guy in the crowd can’t restrain himself from elbowing me and whooping in my ear. I shoot him a filthy one, which he’s not too sauced to overlook: “Sorry, love. I just really love Wild Beasts.” Ah, that’ll be the masses then.
My overeager friend has reason to be excited: drummer Chris Talbot thrashes the gig to within an inch of its life, smiting the skins with two rather menacing gong mallets. ‘Hooting and Howling’ and ‘All The King’s Men’ from Two Dancers (the best album of the year from where my iPod’s standing) provide in more or less equal measure moments of otherworldly quirk and undiluted rock, spurring the crowd to hoot and howl along with the lusty Lake District natives.
Resting somewhere between Antony Hegarty and Kate Bush, Hayden Thorpe’s almost unfathomable falsetto juts out gorgeously against Fleming’s grittier vocals and when the two come together it’s pure dynamite – the harmonies on ‘Please Sir’ in particular are show-stopping. Wild Beasts are lucky enough to possess two front men of unlimited talents and luckier still that Hayden and Fleming can deliver a new world sound with old world soul.
Finishing with the sentimental and epic denouement to Two Dancers, ‘The Empty Nest’, no one here tonight would deny Wild Beasts the title of most charming band around. Next time they play here, just you try and get within spitting distance.