
Queens Hall, Leicester University, University Road, Leicester
Saturday 13 March 2010
£9 adv
in association with Mr Andy Wright
This show is going to be AWESOME!!!!!
www.myspace.com/wildbeasts
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.
Two Dancers, then, doesn’t so much follow up their debut as announce Wild Beasts as one of our genuinely special bands, one that can compete - in terms of both musical and lyrical ingenuity as well as sheer pop nous - with any US act you’ve seen talked up in the music press this year. Sunset Rubdown! Dirty Projectors! Your records just took one hell of a beating. Of course, it’s not really about that, but it is increasingly rare that fans of this sort of envelope-pushing pop can find satisfaction from records produced on these shores. And that’s just not cricket.
Drowned In Sound…
Erland and the Carnival
Erland is Erland Cooper, an Orcadian guitarist. The Carnival are guitarist Simon Tong (The Verve, The Good, The Bad, The Queen) plus drummer/engineer David Nock (engineer on Paul McCartney’s The Fireman). Well, that’s“the basic triangle and three headed monster of the group,” says Tong – keys/harmonium player Andy Bruce, vocalist Georgia Sands and bassist Danny Wheeler complete the extended line-up.
Together, they make a pastoral, psychedelic sound described by Tong as “Pentangle meets Ennio Morricone meets Love meets 13th Floor Elevators meets Joe Meek.” Their debut single, Was You Ever See, is fairly typical of the band’s style – it’s a traditional song brought new life by the unique band, who add dark tones, adapted lyrics and a propulsive beat. It’s the folk tradition: words change over time, but the song remains.
Erland grew up on the Orkney Islands, where passing folk musicians and troubadors were a common sight. In his early teens, The Verve and Bert Jansch inspired him to swap the fiddle for the guitar. Later, having moved to London, Erland sang at Tong’s What The Folk club night in Portobello Road, where he was introduced to Tong by the producer Youth.
“It wasn’t a regular folk night where people are quiet and stroke their chin,” says Tong. “It was a more raucous affair where the acts – as many as 15 a night – had to quieten a noisy baying audience by being good. We had a transsexual compere who would berate the acts and call them cunts even before they had begun, so it was tough for the budding performers – one of which was Erland – who definitely got people to shut up and listen.”
Originally, Nock and Tong talked about writing and producing an album with Erland. Instead, they all decided to form a band, and took their name from Jackson C Frank’s My Name Is Carnival, a cover of which appears on their forthcoming album.
The band’s progression since has been fairly unorthodox: they’ve played gigs at miniature railway stations and their debut EP was individually re-recorded for each of its limited run, meaning no two copies are the same. The forthcoming album, from which Was You Ever See is taken, was recorded at Studio 13 (owned by Tong’s The Good, The Bad, The Queen band mate Damon Albarn) and mixed at Youth’s garden studio.
Lone Wolf signed to the very wonderful Bella Union
Lone Wolf began life in 2009 in various dusty rooms and tape studios around Sweden, songs and ideas slowly coming together through the eyes of singer and guitarist Paul Marshall and the ears of engineer Kristofer Jonson from Jeniferever.
After a month of various field recordings, sneaking into concert halls late at night to use the piano, setting up gear in small village churches, and other places they could find, the basic album tracks were done.
Paul brought all the recordings back home to England in September and together with James from Duels, started on the final stages of mixing the album.
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed in last week’s NME that Wild Beasts’ singer Tom picked Lone Wolf’s album out as one of his hot tips for 2010.
Now complete, “The Devil and I” will be out on Bella Union on May 17th 2010 preceded by the single “Keep Your Eyes On The Road”, and you can see Lone Wolf support the wonderful Wild Beasts in March on all UK dates.