Smother superior

Encircled by guffawing businessmen in iffy pine-stripes and dotty American tourists, Tom Fleming is holding forth on the hot-button topic of intergalactic coition.
“On the taxi in, we were listening to some pop song with a weird alien sex metaphor. ‘I’m gonna disrobe you, I’m gonna probe you...’” says the Wild Beasts man. “Like, what the fuck?! I joked that this is exactly what we were setting ourselves up against. But it’s true – it’s so ridiculous that people are supposed to relate to that sort of thing. And then they wince at our lyrics. I find that mind-bending.”

It’s approaching midday at Dublin’s Brooks Hotel and the lunch-hour crowd has descended early. Sitting incongruously in the corner are Fleming and Wild Beats vocalist Hayden Thorpe. They are here to discuss their much-anticipated third LP Smother. The record is a follow-up to 2008’s Two Dancers, a Mercury nominee and – cue drum-roll! – recipient of the Hot Press Album of the Year accolade (an honour with which the modest duo are still visibly chuffed). Recorded straight after they wrapped 18 months of killer touring, Smother is an attempt to filter the rollercoaster ride that their life has become. Listening to the sometimes powerfully raw and explicit lyrics, there is a sense of the quintet trying to negotiate the groupie-shagging clichés that come with being in a successful band with their sense of chivalry (mostly) intact.
“A lot of music is really safe,” rues Thorpe, who, with beanie hat and backwoods beard, could be on his way to audition for a Fleet Foxes tribute act. “It does what it’s told. It stays safe. There’s a huge misconception that, in order to make music that appeals to the masses, you have to avoid being controversial. That’s a right-wing viewpoint. The reason people place so much importance in music is that it speaks to them at an everyday level. A song like [Smother stand-out] ‘Plaything’ is about the grittiness and selfishness of sexuality and relationships. I think it’s really important to discuss these things and for people to think, ‘Thank fuck I’m not the only one who felt that way.’”
They talk a noble game. But when it’s 3am in some dreary patch of provincial Britain and starry-eyed girl fans are about to storm the tour bus, surely there’s a temptation to submit to one’s baser side? “You have to keep things in context and not become this cartoon rock band,” says Fleming. “Of course to an extent you have to become that sort of group on tour, just to survive. You go somewhere but you can’t get too involved because the next day you’re off to the next place.”
Setting his coffee down, Thorpe finishes his bandmate’s thought.
“As creative people we are in the unique position that we can document what we’ve been through and turn it into something. That’s why we wanted to make the album straight away. Had we taken six months off, we would have forgotten. The edges would have dulled a little bit. We wanted to do something raw and vulnerable and honest.”
In writing so explicitly about sex – and their battle against their sleazier inner selves – Wild Beasts acknowledge they are in breach of a fundamental rule of British guitar rock: thou shalt not express thy true feelings (unless you’re singing about the glory of going out getting blathered with your mates).
“It’s what makes being a north of the UK rock band so interesting. In a lot of ways people believe your boundaries should be very narrow. I think it’s necessary to make the point that, on the inside people aren’t necessarily like that,” Fleming avers. “The funny thing is that there isn’t a lack of sex in British art and music. However, it’s portrayed in such a skewed way. It’s celebrated as something nice and safe that your mum and dad won’t be frightened by. It’s like, your grandad can buy the Sun and it’s got boobs all over page three. At the same time, he’ll be disgusted by an explicit lyric in a song. There’s a real hypocrisy which we like to niggle at.”
How ironic, then, that some commentators should accuse the band of crass sexism. The key evidence for the prosecution is Two Dancers stand-out ‘All The Kings Men’, wherein Thorpe croons, “girls astride, girls beneath, girls before me, girls between me, you’re birthing machines, and let me show darlings what that means”. To untutored ears, it sounds like Philip Larkin reminiscing about an orgy at the Playboy Mansion.
“People don’t realise it’s not me singing on ‘King’s Men’, it’s a character,” says Thorpe. “The song isn’t telling you everything. I think our audience is intelligent enough to see that. What the public expect, I think, is for bands to play the part of all-conquering rock star, to be all about the bravado, to be these guys who make women gush and have one in every port. When you are talking about vulnerability – that can be uncomfortable for a lot of people.”
In the weeks leading up to last year’s Mercury, Two Dancers emerged as the unlikely dark horse of the event. While the smart money remained on eventual winners The xx, in the final days before the ceremony there was a growing consensus that Wild Beasts would be worthy recipients of the Album of the Year gong.
“From day one, we thought The xx were going to win,” says Thorpe. “They were the heroes, we were the underdogs brought in. There has to be a valiant outsider doesn’t there? In the end, they never quite made it. That was our preassigned role, I think.”
Strolling down the Mercury red carpet, being snapped by photographers, was a surreal experience. And while they enjoyed the ceremony, they are glad they didn’t feel too comfortable amongst the cream of the British record industry and the Nathan Barley-alikes populating the UK music press.
“We spent a long time outside the fence looking in,” says Thorpe. “The thing is, having been on the outside, when you’re finally on the inside you feel you shouldn’t quite be there. It was great to be at the Mercurys. At the same time we were all relieved this wasn’t our everyday experience of being in a band. We’ve spent years lugging amps around and sitting in the backs of vans. That’s our reality. The morning after the Mercury, there was a real sense of relief that our world was intact – that this big hand hadn’t come down and plucked us out.”
They recorded Smother in London. It was the first time they’d made an album outside of the north of England. Strangely, being away from their native Lake District made them feel more rooted there than ever before. To a far greater extent than either of their previous records, Thorpe feels the new LP is steeped in the sensibilities of that remote corner of rural Cumbria.
“Funnily, this album sounds like the Lake District. The further we went around the world, the more we were drawn to what we knew. It was where we wanted to be. Cumbria has a cultural connection to Manchester and Leeds. However, it is still very much its own place. You can live your whole life there.”
They must have been shocked as anyone when, just a few miles from their home town of Kendal, gunman Derrick Bird went on a killing spree, shooting dead 12 people in June of last year.
“The great myth,” says Fleming, “is that people are the product of their environment. The truth is that people can malfunction in any situation. Of course, it’s always shocking when something like that occurs in a mundane place, a place where, usually, nothing ever happens.”

Smother gets a live airing when Wild Beasts perform at the Forbidden Fruit festival at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham over the June Bank Holiday weekend.