Send "Wild Beasts " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Thephoenix |
 It would be easy to overuse singer Hayden Thorpe's ebullient falsetto and dilute its campy majesty. Wild Beasts, a dreamy English quartet with a penchant for licentious lyrics and showy flourishes, know better. Their second album sees Thorpe trading lead vocals with bandmate Tom Fleming, a capable and compelling singer in his own right.The pair contrast sharply, with Thorpe pushing the band into boundless, fanciful realms and Fleming favoring a more down-to-earth approach. Together, they make Two Dancers feel consistent and whole. Thorpe's "Underbelly" and "The Fun Powder Plot" are imbued with drama as he struts about searching for new ways to enunciate and color each syllable with his stunning countertenor. He demands all the attention, but Wild Beasts are too good a band to be overwhelmed, and their chilly reserve holds its own against his ardency. Fleming's delivery is deep and solid on "All the King's Men" and "Two Dancers," even as he allows the intricacies of the music to seep through, with bell-like guitars glittering amid the racket of drums and piquant keyboards. Two Dancers is expressive without being effusive, polished without sounding stilted, and provocatively playful....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| They said Wild Beasts' 2008 debut, Limbo, Panto was an ambitious record. They were right. It was an album that sought to push the boundaries of modern-day art-rock/alt-pop and, for this writer, shifted expectations of what was possible from a new UK act. It was flawed, sure - Hayden Thorpe's Associates/Antony/annoying (delete as applicable) falsetto grated slightly by the album's end, and single cut 'Devil's Crayon' was by far the stand-out track - but it was still a superb maiden recording. In the space of just three songs, Two Dancers suggests itself a superior successor. They've ramped everything up a few notches, improving - rather than reinventing - Limbo, Panto's expansive blueprint. The opening trio of 'The Fun Powder Plot', 'Hooting & Howling' and 'All The King's Men' is one of the best you'll hear all year, comprising a number of genuine mouth-open, fuck-me-this-is-good moments. The band's ability to shift rhythms and tempos is one of their key assets, and the way lead single 'Hooting & Howling' ebbs and flows as the arrangement is stripped down and built back up again is simply masterful. Drummer Chris Talbot's dynamic yet sensitive percussion is one of the track's - indeed, the record's - key ingredients....full text |
| Nme |
| Making the strange seem normal is the most accomplished act of artistic alchemy. Any idiot can try to be weird; most will just end up being depressingly inane. But to take something as wonderfully, magically strange as Wild Beasts’ debut ‘Limbo, Panto’ and sublimate its elements into something as subtly beautiful as ‘Two Dancers’ is something very special indeed. The ‘look at me!’ theatricality of Hayden Thorpe’s swoops and screeches, the poetic flourishes and jarring incongruities of the lyrics, the olde-world historical scenes… well, they’re all still there. But Wild Beasts Phase Two is less vaudevillian and a lot more lyrical....full text |
Wild Beasts lyrics
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