Track: Wild Beasts – Hooting and Howling

LYRICS AND TRACK REVIEW: Wild Beasts – Hooting and Howling
words: Jamie Milton

——————————————————————–
Carry me hooting and howling, to the river to wash off my hands of the hot
blood, the sweat and the sand.
Any rival who goes for our girls will be left thumb sucking in terror and bereft of all coffin bearers.
A crude art, a bovver boot ballet – equally elegant and ugly.
I was as thrilled as I was appalled, courting him in fisticuffing waltz.
Now I’m not saying the lads always deserve a braying.
And I’m not saying the girls are worth the fines I’m paying.
We’re just brutes bored in our bovver boots. We’re just brutes clowning ‘round in cahoots. We’re just brutes looking for shops to loot. We’re just brutes hoping to have a hoot…
Hooting, hooting and howling.
——————————————————————–

The first single taken off ‘Two Dancers’, the Kendal-bred four-piece’s second release on Domino Records, more than anything re-asserts their position as the most inventive and as of this writer’s opinion, the most important band in the country. The lyrics above give you a fairly direct indication of the light-hearted but bold attempt at a fluttering sun-tinged anthem. Arriving in their masses are sounds already greatly associated with Wild Beasts after ‘Limbo, Panto’ but a big-thinking mid-section offers something new. Uninvited to the gathering comes a spacey, reverb-stained guitar line so unlike any of the band’s work before you can do nothing but take notice.

Those Smiths comparisons you were never quite sure to mention can now fully jump out from the edge of your lips. It’s another intelligent, carefully-crafted gem, relatively offputting for the average consumer because of Hayden’s falsetto but for the fan, it simply upholds the band’s claim to be something utterly unique to music today.

mp3: Wild Beasts – Hooting and Howling [alt]
[listen @ myspace]

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