We’ve all seen the news by now – Dork faves Wild Beasts have announced their split.
One of Britain’s most daring, intellectual and experimental bands, best known for their Mercury Music Prize nominated record Smother’, the Yorkshire band have stated that they feel it’s ‘time to leave the orbit’ after 13 years together, leading to an outpouring of dedications from the likes of Everything Everything, Foals and Forest Swords.
A staple of the North East music scene, their penchant for off-kilter art pop made them a significant name to watch from the beginning.
Combining the delicate enunciation of Thorpe with the rich, sonorous tones of Tom Fleming, their near choral marriage should have been dysfunctional- for every swooping falsetto there was a countering baritone, camp Victoriana cowering under the fists of brutish testosterone. Somehow, it worked. In a career that outlasted a decade, this dual-frontmanship has allowed them to cover lyrical themes as diverse as 90s pro wrestler Ric Flair (‘Nature Boy’), modern feminism (‘Alpha Female’), Saturday-night hedonism (‘Celestial Creatures’), romantic regret (‘Loop the Loop’) and debauched Victorian orgies (‘All The Kings Men’) with the same ease, unlocking their most potent strength – the ability to portray both male and female emotions in all their subtleties, offering a sensuality and playfulness that would speak to lads and scholars alike.
From their very beginning, Wild Beasts lyrical themes were that of anthropology, not always modern. Their very essence revolves tightly around the human form, with strong connotations of sexuality and the relationship between emotional and physical impulse. Through heartbreak and sorrow to hedonism and chest-puffing machoism, they made no qualms about their own intellectual ambition, and we can only hope that this end comes as a pause before something even bigger. The legacy they leave is one of a band who managed to make music that felt inherently northern, manly and fatalistic, and yet cosmopolitan, soft, vulnerable. In a world where we are finally beginning to understand that gender is neither black or white, they felt like a very important shade of grey.
Farewell Beasts, you will be missed.