Masculinity is so unnatural
Wild Beasts from left: Ben Little, Tom Fleming, Hayden Thorpe and Chris Talbot. (Picture: Klaus Thymann
'Machismo is basically a drag act,' says Wild Beasts frontman Tom Fleming. 'There's a gross swagger that usually accompanies masculinity and that's something that's learned and unnatural.
clouds our ability to discuss sexuality frankly, which is why many men are reluctant to talk about sex. Particularly men in pop groups. They're afraid of looking ridiculous. And that's not good enough.'
Among a morass of identikit indie bands, who have little to say and say it badly, Wild Beasts are something of an anomaly. They're four schoolfriends from Kendal in Cumbria who aren't afraid to mix sonic weirdness with arcane literary Tiffany And Co Brisbane references. They talk about sex and sexuality, about Rimbaud and Larkin, art and commerce, truth and beauty. It's rare to meet a pop group who are as enthusiastic about playing Assassin's Creed or Fifa Soccer as they are about the feminist theorist Hlne Cixous.
'There's book learning there,' says Hayden Thorpe, Wild Beasts' other frontman and co lyricist. 'But our music is essentially quite visceral. I like Henry Miller's idea Nike Air Max Thea Australia that everything we ever learn just takes us away from our innate impulses.
Every nuance and polite gesture you're taught is essentially just clouding a natural want. That question of the body versus the mind, the pushes and pulls between the two, springs up a lot in our songs.'
This yin and yang tension is replicated by the band's two lead singers. Fleming is the gruff, beardy, baritone voiced one, whose lyrics flirt with dark imagery. Thorpe is the camper figure, with an operatic falsetto that swoops into more rarefied territory.
'Most bands don't have one great singer,' says drummer Chris Talbot. 'We're lucky enough to have two. And, where their voices used to be very distinct on our earlier records, they've started to get closer and become complementary.'
After releasing three albums in three years including the Mercury nominated Two Dancers they took a year off. 'We worked alone in our rooms for a while,' says guitarist Ben Little, 'and then reconvened to exchange ideas.'
Fleming adds: 'Our early work was the product of being in the middle of nowhere and having space to make a racket. Now we're living in flats in London, so the music emerged from cramped spaces into headphones.'
The result, Present Tense, is possibly their finest album yet, one that augments their glacial art rock with burbling, brooding synths. They're assisted by two producers Alex 'Lexxx' Dromgoole (who mixed their previous releases) and Brian Eno sidekick Leo Abrahams. 'Lexxx was the head, Leo was the heart,' says Fleming. 'Leo's one of those infuriatingly good musicians who can listen to something you've just played and play it back to you, ten times better.'
The lyrics remain compelling, frank and slightly disturbing. Sweet Spot is a poetic hymn to the orgasm ('a godly state/where the real/and dream they consummate'); Nature Boy alludes to archetypes of male identity Mbt Australia ('the absurdities of machismo,' says Thorpe) while Daughters is a dark meditation on violence directed at women ('it's about masculine weakness in the face of feminine strength,' says Fleming).
'In a way, by broadening the palette of the music, the pressure is off the lyricist,' says Thorpe. 'When we were using more conventional instruments the meat and two veg of guitars, bass and drums the voices had to carry more of the impetus. Now, increasingly, all the weight and the drama is in the music.'
It hasn't stopped some folks from reading rather a lot into the words. Opening track Wanderlust mixes a Jarvis Cocker ish celebration of the underclass ('we feel the things they'll never feel/they're solemn in their wealth, we're high in our poverty') with a sideswipe at shallow British acts who don't sing in their Cheap Nike Air Max Australia 'mother tongue'. Some saw this as a feud with Arctic Monkeys.
'It's most certainly not about the Arctic Monkeys,' sighs Thorpe. 'It's more about the projection of sincerity in art. Ray Ban Sunglasses The X Factor is full of sob stories but it's all borrowed sincerity. If you're trying to engage me emotionally, I'm not going to believe a word of it. When business is struggling, it asks art to do things that aren't beneficial to art, which is to make big business music, big business gestures, big business emotion.
'At the same time, there is beauty in that big business artifice. There are songs by Rihanna and Lana Del Rey that are fantastic. Tom and I did an acoustic version of Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball for an Irish radio station. Once you peel it back a bit, it's a heartwrenching country song.'
There's a comforting bathos in discovering that, for all their intensity, Wild Beasts' relaxation activities are rather more pedestrian. They play computer games.
'On stage, you're living in the skin of some superhero, embodying a fantastical identity,' says Thorpe. 'The only natural path back down, after a gig, is to play Fifa and embody Ronaldo for a while'
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