Those over at gigwise.com have just unleashed their very own “albums of the year” list, featuring many an artist in common with our list. That might have something to do with “our Jamie” having his say in the list, and contributing a few words to it too:
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Noah and The Whale: ‘First Days Of Spring’ (Vertigo)
– Laura Marling will come of much focus next year. Her own “F.U.R.B” will most likely make its appearance after, let’s face it, Charlie Fink made her sound like a malicious heartbreaker on ‘The First Days Of Spring’. Fink’s story is told with clichéd natural imagery, quite un-originally comparing a relationship to the four seasons. But the ambitious, building sonics conjured by orchestras and a tight band performance give this album something really beautiful to take pride in, a beauty that was even portrayed in a feature film that accompanied the album upon release.
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Animal Collective: ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’ (Domino) -
From the very start; building minimal acoustic pop and keeping to the notion of abstraction, to now; releasing full-blown pop music, Animal Collective have done nothing but grow. Their sound has developed like only a fortune-teller could see coming, their status has morphed from cult heroes to mass opinion-dividers. Those aware of ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ either feel betrayed by it, disgusted by it or more suitably, feel that the golden age of Avey Tare and co. has just arrived. A work of staggering brilliance.
———————————— Wild Beasts: ‘Two Dancers’ (Domino) –
Ditching intimidating flamboyance for something far more tender and heart-swept, Wild Beasts came of age in 2009 with their beautiful display of melancholy in ‘Two Dancers’. Maintaining lyrical wit and crossover vocals that previously warded off passers by, only this time supporting them with lighter, more cuddly melodies, they struck gold. This Kendal-bred four piece now look like a serious prospect for the long run and regardless of the excellence of ‘Two Dancers’, many are already expecting better – a feat that will surely be near impossible to achieve.
Many of the stars of tomorrow or the next day haven’t shown their faces yet. They’ll pop up in an SXSW or national talent show or out of the purse of a record label executive. But some of the biggest names are already staring us in the face. Some have released one, two albums and will continue to grow in spectacular fashion.
Below are just a small handful of artists who are without doubt capable of evolving like Radiohead did, like Spoon did, like Sigur Ros did in the last ten years. Existing bands who will still very much exist in ten years time.
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Frightened Rabbit
In Frightened Rabbit you get the eschewed, twisted take on delivering heart-rendering love songs from the pit of the heart. Their brand of stadium-approved Scottish rock is probably something that most of the band’s fans don’t want to explode into the mainstream. But it’s more than capable of doing so. With a new album due next year, expert songwriting might eventually find a home on mainstream radio and as easily as that, it could erupt into new beginnings.
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HEALTH
The consensus about HEALTH is that they’re already far ahead of their time. The music they make; hard-hitting slabs of perfectly-crafted noise rock, will never win millions of fans. But critical acclaim towards the band will go overboard if the follow-up to this year’s ‘Get Color‘ is more spectacular, intricate and jaw-dropping that its already impressive predecessors. Expect to hear the sound of the future develop nicely over the next few years.
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Laura Marling
The only solo artist that we’re mentioning. And that’s for a reason because most successful solo artists cannot forge a lengthy career of success – the likes of Lily Allen, James Blunt, Jack Johnson can all vouch for that. But Marling has something of a PJ Harvey aura about her, someone capable of developing that dark yet relatively simplistic acoustic sound of hers. We’re not asking Laura Marling to go rock n’roll but let’s face it, one word heavily featured around press of her debut album was “potential” and as she enters a new decade with a new album in tow, it wouldn’t be fair not to expect anything but excellence.
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Wild Beasts
It seems quite strange that when ‘Two Dancers‘ was released and when nearly everybody fell head over heels in love with it, that there was talk that this band had an ‘OK Computer’ in them. This is odd considering Wild Beasts sound more like a lot of bands than Radiohead but where they’re coming from is the idea that this is a band who so crucially developed from their debut to their sophomore record and when a band are as driven and determined to out-do themselves as Wild Beasts are, you can only assume there’s more to come.
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The XX
The new faces in our choices, the XX are already crafting an original, mature sound in their (sort of) self-titled debut. Their live performances are appreciated and brains behind the sound Jamie XX is making waves in the blog community with his exceptional remixes. The best thing about the debut was that it in no way pigeonholed the band’s sound: there was a dabbling into straightforward pop, into dubstep, into hip-hop. The doors are still open and the band could go nearly anywhere from this fantastic starting point. No pressure. mp3: Basic Space (Pariah Remix)
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Yeasayer
‘Ambling Alp‘ having just arrived, Yeasayer effectively announcing a more direct route into cultured pop from their ambitious debut ‘All Hour Cymbals’. ‘Odd Blood’ is the forthcoming release, due out next February and a level of expectation akin to that which surrounded the latest Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear albums, is beginning to build. Trust me though, it’s for a reason. Yeasayer have been showcasing intelligent yet instant pop music through their new songs in shows recently and you get the sense that they won’t be finishing at ‘Odd Blood’. mp3: Ambling Alp
Courtesy of Baeblemusic, this rather dimly-light performance of Wild Beasts, showcasing the finest material from this year’s ‘Two Dancers’ and the equally glorious ‘Limbo, Panto’ , is a sight (correction, sound) to behold.
‘Two Dancers’ has many fine qualities but it’s the sexual bravado of Tom Fleming on ‘All The Kings Men’ that stands out first and foremost after a few enjoyable listens. He described to MFM about how he wanted his voice to come across as “half Elvis Presley, half Slavian rapist”. Job done.
1 – Michael Jackson – The Essential (Some people must be buying this every day? Is it some traditional gift for new-borns all of a sudden?)
New entries: 68 – Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (This is a disgrace. Everyone bums a critically acclaimed album but nobody actually goes out and buys it. Instead it’s beaten by…) 13 – Frankmusik – Complete Me (Now the record company might consider this a failure but ‘Complete Me’ is a pathetic turd of a debut album, and did in no way deserve to come 55 places above Wild Beasts) 20 – The Twang – Jewellery Quarter (The worst of all. The most tame, uninspiring music out there today makes the top 20. This, combined with the whole of Europe going far-right, is the biggest problem we face as human beings)
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This is when the debate of illegal music downloading should begin to come in again. The vast majority of file sharers actually have pretty good taste. Think the hypemachine users, the bloggers even, an awful lot of them file-share. There should be a fine line drawn between sampling a record, seeing if it fits your tastes, and refusing to go out and buy it.
Sure, this might sound hypocritical from a music blogger who 1) puts up mp3’s on his posts for sampling purposes and 2) got sent ‘Two Dancers’ for free for review purposes BUT Wild Beasts might now have problems raising the money to make a third record, an album with so much prospect. Wild Beasts are one of the few British bands to be showing any potential of changing, really enlightening music. But to be outdone in sales by The Twang, goes to show that the UK still has a big taste problem.
words: Jamie Milton originally scribed for gigwise
Underage Festival 2008, Wild Beasts have just started their set on the Domino stage, a stage home to their record label. Teenagers haven’t turned up in their masses and you assume those watching with little movement are just taking it all in. But then there’s a hormonal flurry as a good 99/100 of the crowd flock towards the Domino merch man, with free gifts on offer. Wild Beasts, unphased, simply play on the finer material on their debut album, ‘Limbo, Panto’. At the time, you couldn’t help but feel that they were grossly misunderstood, especially amongst these bloody kids. Because Wild Beasts are the sort of band you should care a lot about. Yet all of a sudden, people really, really care. ‘Two Dancers’ is waving the “album of the year” flag loud and proud for all to see and this time round, people are flocking to have a listen, not to bag some freebies.
So far, unless someone from The Sun publicly projects their disbelief at Hayden Thorpe’s “bit too girly” falsetto, Wild Beasts’ second album is pretty much the most critically acclaimed piece of music around. And the dust has yet to settle – ‘Two Dancers’ is only being released this week. Taking it in calmly and collectively, but staying all the more appreciative of what’s happening, bassist and husky-voiced co-vocalist with Thorpe, Tom Fleming seems in good spirits: “I mean, when we began, we didn’t say: “We’re going to make a critically acclaimed album,” but I’m noticing how much difference a good review makes and how much people’s opinions matter and how much the coarse of opinion matters.” This acknoledgement comes one day after the NME prints its 9/10 review for ‘Two Dancers’, a critical move that will no doubt expose Wild Beasts to a completely new audience. “It’s just great that they’re taking us seriously, it’s very, very nice that it’s going down so well.”
For a band that have been widely divisive between audiences, both on record and on stage, now is the time for Wild Beasts to certify their musical legacy, if they can. “If nothing else, we’re a “sit up and pay attention” band, we have the “what the fuck” factor at least.” Tom admits,
“But that’s the test this time with ‘Two Dancers’, we no longer have this “what the fuck” factor, we’re no longer a new band and we’re no longer young.” Fleming gives the impression of a man with his feet firmly on the ground. Regardless of where ‘Two Dancers’ might end up taking them, you can expect nothing but professionalism and modesty from this Kent-bred quartet.
“I remember asking to be made to sound half Elvis Presley, half Slavian Rapist”.
The album itself fits the requirements of the perfect second album. It’s a rotation of ideas, from theatric flamboyancy to reverb-soaked vulnerability, lyrics remain littered with sex-references, percussion is kept smart and tight but somewhere during the last year or so, something clicked and Wild Beasts matured and truly became Beasts, as opposed to cubs. Fleming declares the recording process a “big learning curve for us”, convinced that his band emerged from the studio, “growing in confidence”. On ‘Two Dancers’, amongst a melancholic, underwater atmosphere comes a dance-off between Thorpe and Fleming, both completely diverse vocalists, both representing various ideas and goals. “Me and Hayden realised that we’d both become two characters, representing different poles of the album.” Hayden Thorpe is essentially the intellectual, sex-obsessed nutcase, blasting out rhyming couplets that a good generation of lyricists wouldn’t be capable of replicating, whilst Thorpe plays the part of an exposed human being, one brave enough to declare “two hearts, no more” at the close of the two-part title track, the absolute centerpiece of the latest record.
But there’s more to ‘Two Dancers’ than sex references and a battle between two extravagant characters. “The ‘two dancers’ theme that underpins it is this idea of something always being out of reach, something always beyond your control. Everything is leading this formalised, abstract pattern, as if your life is proceeding without you and this album covers the joys and the frustrations of that. There’s a lot of loss and reconciliation, I suppose and it ends indefinitely, unsure.” He’s right, at the heart of it all, ‘Two Dancers’ is one of the most melancholic releases for some time. It switches between an defeatist attitude and one quite gritty and intimidating. Fleming recalls how he wanted ‘All The Kings Men’ to sound: “I remember asking to be made to sound half Elvis Presley, half Slavian Rapist”.
“The biggest pleasure of music is surprise,” announces Tom. And that completely sums up Wild Beasts. Whatever they continue to become, they will always be a band that stay true to the laurel of making a casual passer-by shake their head in disbelief and make a scurry to the merchandise stand.
Interview with Wild Beasts
words: Jamie Milton with Tom Fleming Full feature to appear on gigwise.com
photo credit: Lucy Johnston // flickr
Jamie: The thing that we should talk about is ‘Two Dancers’. Have you seen the NME review (album of the week, 9/10 score)?Tom: Yeah I was slightly surprised, it’s nice that they’re taking us seriously which is cool. It was quite an in depth review.
Yeah it’s not often they give a 9 out of 10 and no matter what people say, the magazine is still taken seriously. Does it matter to you, to get good press or a good review? The thing is it makes a difference to how many people it can reach. That’s something I’ve learnt. I mean we didn’t set out and say, “We’re gonna make a critically acclaimed album” but I’m noticing how much difference a good review makes and how much people’s opinion’s matter and how much the course of opinion matters.
Everyone’s a critic themselves. Obviously our music is the biggest extension you can have for our own opinions on music so it’s nice that it’s well received.
There’s something about Wild Beasts sound, it’s quite divisive between audiences, with Hayden’s falsetto especially but if you’ve got lots of critics championing the album it certainly will help.
Absolutely yeah, if you please everybody you like nobody. We just want to do what we want to do and people can decide for themselves. But it’s very, very nice that it’s going down so well.
Obviously the first impression is very important and a lot of people don’t take Wild Beasts too seriously the first time they set ears on them. Have you ever had any bad experiences with supporting a band where people just haven’t heard you before?
Not so many, there have been a couple, maybe. I think as far as those experiences go I think we’ve been pretty lucky. I think some bands have a really rough time when they’re supporting people. If nothing else, we’re a “sit up and pay attention” band, we have the “what the fuck” factor at least. But that’s the test this time with ‘Two Dancers’, we no longer have this “what the fuck” factor, we’re no longer a new band and we’re no longer young.
It does feel like you’ve evolved your sound quite quickly. The general consensus seems to be that you’ve matured a good five albums worth in the space of one. That’s awesome. We learnt a lot from making the first record and we were writing as soon as it came out. The first album had quite a lot of old songs in a lot of ways, a lot of people’s first albums are like that. We’ve taken our time with this and we’ve been a lot more deliberate. We’ve taken our time to make a record with a theme, with a purpose, I suppose.
How would you describe that theme? I’ve tried to get my head round it, there’s quite a lot of melancholy and sexual references. Yeah, they’re both dead right. The ‘two dancers’ theme that underpins it is this idea of something always being out of reach, that it’s always beyond your control, leading this formalised, abstract pattern. As if your life is proceeding without you and this album covers the joys and the frustrations of that. There’s a lot of loss and reconciliation, I suppose and it ends indefinitely, unsure. Whether the reconciliations are real of imagined it’s kind of up to the listener, I guess.
It’s kind of a more grown up record than the first one. The first one was littered with sex as well but here we’ve given a more grown up take on it. We’ve learnt that the world can be a difficult place to live in but there’s no need to wallow in that.
You yourself, you seem to feature more vocally. Was that to suit the sound a little more or was that you stamping your authority on the recording process?
Going back to the first record, I think me and Hayden realised that we’d both become two characters, representing different poles of the album. I mean, the songs are written very quickly, we only have four pairs of hands, and there was a lot of instrument swapping so that’s how the songs seemed to work. Usually if I had some lyrics, I sang them and if Hayden had some lyrics, he sang them. That was because of time constraints more than anything but it seemed to work fairly well.
All the writing is credited to Wild Beasts because it’s very much an open process.
Do you tend to write on your own and then meet up and discuss and work on the pieces?
Yeah usually songs will be preceded by something very rough and we’d try to bring it out. We practice an awful lot so we tend to play it out, each of us suggesting one thing or the other: “I see that, I’ll raise you this…”, that sort of process.
Some songs went through loads of different versions, different rhythms and arrangements. ‘Two Dancers’ (parts 1 and 2) are great examples of ideas changing throughout. The melody from those two songs reappears at the end of ‘Hooting & Howling’, which is partly based around the chords of those songs. And synth sound in those songs is very similar to the opening synth sound at the start of the album and also features in ‘This Empty Nest’ and ‘Underbelly’ later on. All the songs partly inform eachother, and that song itself became a focal idea, lyrically and musically, like ripples on a pond.
“We’re growing in confidence”
Do you want to try and different sounds and atmospherics as you move on to more records?
Well I think it’s a logical progression. For this record, we knew better than we did for the first record. We’ve got an idea where we’d like to go. To be fair, we’re growing in confidence. This was a big learning curve for us again.
Even as you progress, you’re still a very difficult band to pigeonhole. ‘Limbo, Panto’ has this very old-fashioned feel to it, this one less so. Are there any contemporary influences that help define your sound?
We listened to a lot of dance and electronic music. When we recorded, everything was done with click-tracks and we tried to incorporate dance structures, not like verse/chorus but more a slow build and slow progression. There was also an influence of dark folk music. I think it’s fair to mention bands like Junior Boys, who we’re big fans of and Talking Heads and we’ve recently discovered Talk Talk.
Structurally there are moments in a song when it will suddenly change, for example the closing section of ‘This Is Our Lot’. Do you always check a song to see if it’s interesting throughout? Do you attempt to add new things in all the time?
We definitely try and wrong-foot people and keep people on their toes. The biggest pleasure of music is surprise. Whatever type of music it is, there needs to be a shock factor, something you’re not expecting. At the same time, we try and be concise because at nature, we’re a pop band.
Favourite records:
I mean there’s obviously been a lot of fuss over the Animal Collective record and I don’t think it’s as good as some of their earlier work but I do like it.
I think there’s been a backlash towards it. Yeah, there was so much good juice spilt over it that there eventually was a backlash. I read Everett True’s article, his attack, which seemed a bit unfair. I’m sure if we get a lot of good reviews, there will be a backlash too.
Yeah I’m sure he’ll be scribing his “defending the indefensible” article when you get popular enough. (Laughs) I wish I could name some more records but I’m terrible with new music because I’m so busy making stuff. Oh, the new Junior Boys album, that’s excellent. It amazes me they’re not more popular, they write great pop songs. I think there’s a new Joanna Newsom record coming out this year as well which is obviously going to be an event for the wee, little indie boys like myself.
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.
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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.
All mp3s posted on Music Fan's Mic are posted after gaining the relevant permission.
Jamie Milton began Music Fan's Mic in 2006 as a means of publishing and collecting his reviews for other publications. Since then both Milton and Gareth O'Malley are co-running the blog and posting the best new music on a regular basis.
Boom-box-in':
Yeasayer - Odd Blood LP
Final Fantasy Heartland LP
Beach House - Teen Dream LP
These New Puritans - We Want War
Gigi - The Old Graveyard
jj - The xx Intro
Toro Y Moi - Causers of This LP
Liars - Sisterworld LP
Vampire Weekend - White Sky
Los Campesinos! - In Medias Res
rendering love songs
The music they make; hard-hitting slabs of perfectly-crafted noise rock, will never win millions of fans. But critical acclaim towards the band will go overboard if the follow-up to this year’s ‘
most successful solo artists cannot forge a lengthy career of success – the likes of Lily Allen, James Blunt, Jack Johnson can all vouch for that. But Marling has something of a PJ Harvey aura about her, someone capable of developing that dark yet relatively simplistic acoustic sound of hers. We’re not asking Laura Marling to go rock n’roll but let’s face it, one word heavily featured around press of her 
everybody fell head over heels in love with it, that there was talk that this band had an ‘OK Computer’ in them. This is odd considering Wild Beasts sound more like a lot of bands than Radiohead but where they’re coming from is the idea that this is a band who so crucially developed from their debut to their sophomore record and when a band are as driven and determined to out-do themselves as Wild Beasts are, you can only assume there’s more to come.
sound in their 
direct route into cultured pop from their ambitious debut ‘All Hour Cymbals’. ‘Odd Blood’ is the forthcoming release, due out next February and a level of expectation akin to that which surrounded the latest Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear albums, is beginning to build. Trust me though, it’s for a reason. Yeasayer have been showcasing intelligent yet instant pop music through their new songs in shows recently and you get the sense that they won’t be finishing at ‘Odd Blood’.
1 – Michael Jackson – The Essential (Some people must be buying this every day? Is it some traditional gift for new-borns all of a sudden?)
MFM @ HYPEM
