Wild Beasts: Live at the Olympia

Promising that he wasn’t “just saying it”, Hayden Thorpe, the countertenor singer for Wild Beasts recently told me about the “sense of comradery” the Cumbrian band feel with Irish audiences. It’s the same sense they get in Mexico City and Istanbul, of all places: this feeling that we’re at one with the darkness, that we’ve endured barbarous times in the past but we can pull a smile or three from the gloom. That black humour. “Humour is such an important thing in our music,” Thorpe said. “It’s a membership, the way it’s used: ‘Do you get the joke? Are you an insider, are you one of us?’”

Tonight in this old Victorian music hall, Irish membership of Wild Beasts’ exclusive club is over one thousand strong at least. By the time the lingering encore comes to a close – with an exquisitely epic version of ‘End Come Too Soon’ that advances and recedes like the sea – the urbane Thorpe has fully expressed his affection for Irish shores in performance and words.

His cohort in frontman duties, Tom Fleming, is an altogether more reserved presence, everything he does serving the song. When it’s called upon, his earthier tones counterbalance Thorpe’s vaulting style perfectly, though this evening those low rumbles do tumble into the bass sound and disappear just a tad.

With a setlist cherry-picking from their four albums to date (though their debut is served only by a jittery, dashing ‘The Devil’s Crayon’), the Smother contingent feel the most confident, with the likes of ‘Bed Of Nails’ and ‘Lion’s Den’ coming over like stalwart selections.

That’s not to say that there’s a duff note anywhere else. ‘The Fun Powder Plot’, taken from 2009’s Two Dancers is delivered feverishly and fervently, whilst Present Tense newies ‘Wanderlust’, ‘Mecca’ and Daughters’ update their Beastly sound as reined-in tempos and smouldering synths dominate.

We could talk all day about those twin vocals, the oft-macabre, highly-arch subject matter of the songs, but in reality this is a band built on rhythm. The tribal pulse of Chris Talbot impresses as ever, and plays a big part in Wild Beasts’ serpentine DNA overall. At the end of this highly accomplished show the quartet duly soak up the adulation from the throngs who “get it”, before slipping away again into the shadows. Considering it’s where they find the most interesting things, we eagerly await their return for some more show and tell.