(Domino/EMI)

Bizarre Brit rock, complete with deranged choirboy vocals

Wild Beasts are a band quite at home on Domino, the label that also houses R&B ghouls Clinic and punk blues howlers Archie Bronson outfit. For this combo also has a unique, almost otherworldly spin to rock music that makes their debut album Limbo, Panto a peculiar but certainly intriguing listening experience. However, it must be warned, if you don’t like “unusual” singers, Wild Beasts are not going to be your cup of tea – main vocalist Hayden Thorpe possesses a truly bizarre falsetto that is somewhere between a choirboy and the ghost of a doowop singer, like Frankie Lymon from beyond the grave. The overall band sound is slightly (but only slightly) more conventional, a dark, grandiose hybrid of chiming indie guitars, spooky blues rock and, on single Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants, a thumping disco hybrid. Once you’re used to the eccentricities, the strange beauty of the likes of Vigil For A Fuddy Duddy and The Devil’s Crayon reveal themselves. And in frontman Thorpe, Wild Beasts have a distinctive “love him or hate him” vocalist, up there with early Roxy-era Bryan Ferry or Pere Ubu’s David Thomas in the rock oddball stakes.

***½

MATT THROWER

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