Wild Beasts - Smother album review

Album Review: Wild Beasts – ‘Smother’

Domino Records (9 May 2011)

Rating: ****

Kendal, Cumbria. Famous for Kendal Mint Cake, astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, Postman Pat creator John Cunliffe, historian David Starkey, most of British Sea Power and now Wild Beasts. This is no mean feat for a town of 27,000 people. Soon, such will be the ratio of genius-to-people that a Kendalian war of words between Wild Beasts and British Sea Power will be neccessary. While British Sea Power will clearly win a drinking and fighting contest, Wild Beasts have just released Smother, an album of a robust beauty that will prove hard to better this year; and it’s a far better album than British Sea Power’s Valhalla Dancehall. Indeed, Smother and PJ Harvey’s stunning Let England Shake are almost certain to be among the most critically adored LPs of the year. Just downbeat enough to avoid being maudlin and delicate enough to remind us that indie doesn’t have to be arrogant and caustic.

Smother is not an enormous leap from Two Dancers, which bagged Wild Beasts a Mercury Award nomination, but the band prove that leaping is not required when their formula is so successful. Opener ‘Lion’s Share’ offers up another example of the band’s obsession with sex, but this time the sexual ambiguity of old is turned up a notch: ‘I wait until you’re woozy, I lay low until you’re lame, I take you in my mouth like a lion takes his game’, sings Hayden Thorpe’s unmistakable voice. It’s a bold start and ‘Bed of Nails’ follows this up with what can only be described as sex grunts as Thorpe sings ‘O, Ophelia, I feel your fall. O, Ophelia…’, emphasising orgasmic O’s whilst describing how he wants their kisses to make his lips blister. It’s a beautiful track, and is a perfect progression from songs like ‘We Still Got the Taste Dancing on Our Tongues’ from their sophomore album.

Even a casual fan will see how the band has toned down their operatics from album to album, but this is no bad thing. Where many bands become bland and insipid as they chase the money, Wild Beasts have just matured and shown how they can manipulate emotions much better than they can make rock tunes. For every ‘Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants’ of the past, tracks like ‘Loop the Loop’ and ‘End Come too Soon’ serve to remind us of the band’s elegant evolution. Very little in Smother raises the heartbeat, but almost every note raises the spirits, elevating Wild Beasts into not just a great band, but an important one.