Album Review: Two Dancers - Wild Beasts

BlackPlastic has listened to the Wild Beasts' new album Two Dancers many, many times already and yet is still a little at odds with what to think. Listening to this album is a bit like trying to make love to fish - it's difficult to get a purchase on what you like about it but once you have reached its climax it generally feels like it was worth the effort.

Singer Hayden Thorpe's falsetto vocals do occasionally stray a little close to pretentious pomp but for every slight miss-step (the ponderous 'When I'm Sleepy') there are moments of sheer fantasy - the tenor intro to 'All The Kings Men' followed by a superb lead vocal delivery.

Wild Beasts also have a wonderfully delicate sound at times - as the gentle muted guitar of album opener 'The Fun Powder Plot' comes in it captures a tremendous amount of feeling before a single word is even laid down. And despite having a sound that at times feels a little self-consciously arty there are still hooks you can get behind, as on lead single 'Hooting & Howling'.

What Wild Beasts have created in Two Dancers is an album of magnificent depth. It may occasionally boil over but when it delivers it manages to evoke the curious feeling of what it is to be a you Britain in our age. This is an album that undoubtedly looks forward yet at the same time it could only exist given Britain's musical heritage.

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Two Dancers is released on 3 August on Domino, available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP [affiliate links].