Wild Beasts
Two Dancers
Domino, September 2009
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Co-lead singers Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming represent the meticulously struck balance of Wild Beasts' second album of sumptuous, occasionally shocking art-rock Two Dancers as well as anything else. Like Bryan Ferry subjected to some sort of Silver Age DC Comics bifurcation beam, Thorpe sings in a foppish falsetto, Fleming in a rich mahogany baritone. Each vocal approach enhances different aspects of the band's music: Thorpe's swoops and screeches twirl effortlessly atop and around the keening guitar of Ben Little, while Fleming's warmth and fullness echoes the rock-solid foundation laid down by his basslines and Chris Talbot's surefooted drumming.

Yet at the same time, each undercuts and complicates the lyrics they sing, lyrics that treat male desire and anger with often alarming openness. Thorpe can deliver kiss-offs to a former lover like "This is a booty call--my boot up your asshole" ("The Fun Powder Plot") or proclaim his penchant for hooliganism by announcing "We're just brutes, looking for shops to loot" ("Hooting & Howling") and get away with it, his dandyish, defiantly artificial voice stripping the words of tough-guy posturing and exposing the awkwardly animalistic sentiments beneath. For his part, Fleming can flat-out sing about his id, as he does in "All the King's Men"--"Baby, turns out I'm evil / In all my dreams, girls who'll clothe me, girls who'll feed me, girls who want me, girls who need me"--but the Guinness-like depth and complexity of his tone conveys far more self-awareness and self-effacement than self-congratulation. The lyrics' repeated references to the body parts involved in sundry acts of rage and lust and gluttony further emphasize the degree to which these men, for all their erudition, are at the mercy of meatspace. I count fully 46 mentions of everything from bones and teeth to hearts and lungs to ankles and assholes in the lyric sheet; tellingly, the eyes, the window to the soul, are only mentioned once.

Given this, it's no surprise that the group assigns the album's sexiest song--the churning "When I'm Sleepy...," its lyrics consisting solely of the phrase "When I'm sleepy, needing supper, you're the lips for me to pucker"--to the more feminine vocalist, while the baritone is responsible for the harrowing semi-title track "Two Dancers (i)" and its seemingly and sympathetically feminine perspective on sexual assault and the death of and abandonment by children. Simply the phrases selected to convey these ideas--"His hairy hands, his falling fists, his dancing cock down by his knees"; "Our son was dying and we could hardly eat"--form a devastating j'accuse when issued from the bass clef.

The music seems similarly obsessed with the possibilities of duality represented by both singers and album title. The title track is split in two, for one thing, with "Two Dancers (ii)" representing a quieter, colder response to the fiery demands of its immediate predecessor; the pair is itself prefigured by the introduction of its central melodic hook at the very end of "Hooting & Howling" several songs earlier. The album features two short interlude-type songs: The first is the aforementioned sizzler "When I'm Sleepy...", while the second, the far quieter "Underbelly," is as much about lifelong consequences for the seven deadlies as the earlier song is about their immediate gratification. But my favorite pairing is the opening track, "The Fun Powder Plot," with the late-album centerpiece "This Is Our Lot." To take things back to the Silver Age, they're each the Bizarro version of the other. With the same gently twirling mechanical beat and even the same key, "This Is Our Lot" inverts the earlier song, allowing the bass to provide the melody and the guitar to provide the rhythm--a switch paralleled by Thorpe, who here sings toward the bottom of his register. The overall shift is one from hysterical outrage to wry resignation, "The mock" and "the shock" of "The Fun Powder Plot" replaced by the shrugged-shoulder admission "This is our lot: We hold each other up heavy with hops."

The end result? Masculinity without machismo. Sexuality without sexism. Elegance without arrogance. Wild Beasts set a very tricky lyrical and stylistic course for themselves here, but their rare combination of ambition and sophistication sees them arrive not just safely but spectacularly.

Posted by Sean T. Collins at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)