'Beasts emit subtle roar
By David Reed | Sep. 10, 2009Nipping at the heels of last year's debut album Limbo, Panto, Wild Beasts continue their strange and bombastic odyssey into music's darker fathoms with Two Dancers, a decidedly more mature album that advances the band's already extraordinary talents and pushes them into new territory. Wild Beasts are nothing if not unique. Lead singer Hayden Thorpe's ever-present, bawdy-yet-aristocratic falsetto spews epithets and vulgar insinuations as though they were lofty hymns, and bassist Tom Fleming (whose vocal talents are much more prominent this time around) offers a down-to-earth deadpan ring that subtly implicates his narrators in what amount to nothing more than everyday atrocities, all while following tense, galloping rhythms and vast, far-reaching melodies. This combination of musical and lyrical oddity separate Wild Beasts fully from the safety of the norm; these soulful, lilting tracks belie a sinister core bordering on the psychotic.
