Music: Wild Beasts

This Saturday, The Haunt is where the wild things are!

Playing a short notice gig, in effect a warm-up for their Latitude appearance, the Domino Recording Company signed, and Mercury Music Prize nominated Cumbrian quartet, are viewed as one of the
UK’s smartest, most imaginative bands of the day, their three albums to
date testifying to an insatiable quest for…er, sex.

These boys are not prurient, nor indeed are they of the oh-so-British Carry On school of bawdy lewdness and double entendres. They just like to talk about it in a rather more poetic fashion. There’s a rather noirish element to this subject, according to Wild Beasts, but whoever said sex was a straightforward issue anyway!?

Their last album Smother ditched the adventurous glam/new wave stylings for a more dramatic, electronica-based approach, with influences such as Antony & The Johnsons and Talk Talk coming through. Their sound is a combination of delicate, intelligent percussion, elegant synths and finger-picked acoustic guitars, with leader Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto soaring above it all.

Saturday 14 July, The Haunt