Wild Beasts – Limbo Panto
I bought this for only one reason: Drowned in Sound have been going on about with such enthusiasm I thought I’d better give it a try. And were they right? Well they were right about something – there’s definitely something quite amazing going on here. I don’t think I like much of it, but it’s fucking brilliant at the same time, if you get my drift.
It sounds like a deranged musical, somewhere in between Rocky Horror and Moulin Rouge. The pirhouetting falsetto is so extreme that I spent most of the first listen waiting for the Serious Indie Voice kick in, which it never does. As I listen to this the phrase ‘you have got to be fucking joking’ is never far from my thoughts. It’s nuts – what the fuck are they trying to do?
I’m honestly flabberghasted. Songs like The Devil’s Crayon are basically just brilliant pop songs, but most of the rest of it is so camp, so theatrical, so melodramatic it exceeds any scale I have for these kinds of things. Again though, I think this album is brilliant, not because I am likely to listen to it – it’s a bit much for my conservative indie tastes – but because it’s just so bold and direct and shameless. Who the fuck invested in these guys – what balls! Not that I can’t see what he saw, in a sense, but in an era of so much conservatism by nervy record labels, something this creative must represent taking a hefty chance.
What an amazing record. As you can probably tell, I have no idea what to make of it, but I can’t help but be impressed.
Wild Beasts – The Devil’s Crayon
Wild Beasts – Woebegone Wanderers
eeee gads, that was a bit much so early in the morning! kinda reminds me of David Byrne on the upper register! Talented and must be awesome (see? now I can’t stop using that word, damn you!) to see live.
Me neither, but I bet it sounds even sillier in my accent!
Yeah, live I’d imagine they’d be amazing. Mad as a sack of badgers.
Camp as fairy lights.
Strikes me as a novelty that might rapidly wear very thin.
Even toward the end of that second song I started thinking “Hurry up and finish you fucking weirdo.”
Well I put the second one in because it’s representative of the album as a whole. I actually prefer The Club of Fathomless Love, but I wanted to show how I simultaneously don’t really enjoy listening to most of this album and yet am simultaneously really impressed.
I quite like it actually, but weren’t Billy McKenzie and Alan Rankine doing this stuff, and doing it better, 25 years ago? Just listen to White Car in Germany, A Girl Named Property, or Party Fears Two and you’ll see what I mean.
Club Country too.
Yeah perhaps. I’ve really struggled to put my finger on who these guys remind me of actually, although there’s definitely something niggling away in there.
I was reminded of Associates, Suede, and Blue Nile.
Suede? Blue Nile? Erm, did I upload the right files?
Well, the closest comparison in terms of sound is definitely Associates, but I hear a bit of Paul Buchanan in the non-falsetto vocal parts (and perhaps a touch of Neil Pennycook as well), and I was reminded of Suede because of the self-conscious, uproarious gayness of it all.
Even seen the video for Animal Nitrate?
Can’t say I have. You’re not trying to tell me Brett Anderson is a bit camp are you?
He’s straight though, isn’t he? It’s just that he’s as camp as a row of pink fluffy tents.
The Associates was who I thought of immediately too, though he’s sounds a bit like Antony as well. I like “Devil’s Crayon” but the rest is a bit too much for me.
mmmmmm
Antony of ‘& the Johnsons’ fame sprang to mind for me as well actually, and I agree that most of it is a bit much, but it’s sort of fascinating at the same time.
(Euan fuck off)
no need for that. hmmmmphhh.
Hi, been a long time reader, but don’t contribute very much – story of my life. Had to place a comment on this band though. Heard bits and pieces before and am such a fan. Borderline genius and hilarious, perfect combination! I know, I’ll not get a job for NME!
Nor, Izzy, would any of us.
Nice of you to stop by and say hello though – the silent masses are sort of fascinating for me. I always wonder who on earth it is that clicks on this page, other than the handful of people who give me regular abuse. So thanks for saying Hi.
the question is not – could you get a job with nme – it’s – why would you want a job with nme?!
I’d take a job with NME.
You’d spend five minutes knocking off a chunk of childish drivel that no fucker with an IQ in double figures is ever going to read.. Then you could sit back for the rest of the day and watch the monkeys and chimpanzees on the editorial staff throw shit at the walls. Probably quite entertaining.
And you’d get paid for it.
it’s turgid nonsense. i can’t think of a word that best describes that mag.
Bogroll
I cheated a bit by making that one word, I suppose.
Well it is mostly for kids.
Not, I suppose, that that’s any excuse for being so vacuous.
I think the NME would benifit greatly from the banter that flies around this site. They should give you all a weekly column!
Yes, but imagine how tedious the banter would become if the average NME reader tried to participate.
Yech.
But that’s the problem, it wasn’t always for kids.
It was originally for music fans. Now it’s no more than the entertainment column of fucking Hello! magazine. Just as full of dull ’scandals’ about second-rate ‘celebrities’, the only difference being the NME’s ‘celebrities’ wear skinny jeans and carry guitars.
Fucking shite.
And what do the music fans have to do now there’s no real music press? They go on the fucking internet and write it them-fucking-selves!
And they do it for free!
While the fucking retarded apes on the NME get paid for writing arse-gravy that would get the piss ripped out of it until we made the writer cry if they dared to post any of their bollocks on a site such as, for example, this one.
Wankers.
Keep the kids out then, and keep up the good work. Your chat is much enjoyed in my little dull office!
How ironic that my comment about enjoying the chat came after such a ferocious tirade. Not that i think you are wrong Dylan!
That’s quite alright, Izzy. Thank you for the back up!
I seem to be in a bit of a grouchy mood today. I do apologise.
I haven’t had a drink since Sunday, that’ll be the problem.
That would do it!! I think i’ve been reading this site 50% for the music blog 50% for comments like that! Nice! You deserve a pint!
There’s a music blog on here?..
I have the same feelings about Rolling Stone. When I was a kid my older brother had a subscription and I remember that I discovered the Clash in its pages, as well as the Smiths, the Chameleons, Jesus and Mary Chain, and Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, which won Bono’s “he should have been an Irishman” award back in ‘85 (when U2 were a true obsession for me). Now it’s just a disgraceful, shameful, shiny rag that I wouldn’t wipe my ass with for fear of infection.
what’s music? I am confused. Am I getting NME and FHM confused again. Both turgid pish but at least one is full of tits……………………….
Pete Docherty’s a tit.
And the NME is full of him.
Its a symbiotic relationship – FHM helps NMErs achieve their niche as human beings….wankers.
I would argue that FHMs music writers are probably better than NMEs. though was it not maxims music writers who had the power to write a review of an album they’d never heard??
I think Dylan’s point (ages a-fucking-go) gets on my tits a little bit actually. The NME is full of (presumably) talented writers being paid to churn out utter shit. Meanwhile, for all the crap on the internet, the good writers and the music enthusiasts have to give away the quality stuff for nothing because commercial ambition and endless market research won’t tolerate anything like that in a more mainstream sphere. It’s fucking pathetic. Is the human race really so fucking flaccid that researchers insist on turning the NME into the Nathan Barley Music Weekly that it has become? Can’t we handle just a little bit of grown up thinking? Not even a little bit?
To refer to my colourful exposition earlier, isn’t comparing the work of FHM writers and NME writers to see which is best a bit like comparing monkey shit and chimpanzee shit to see which is stickier?
Does it really matter if they’re both shit? And both all over your wall.
Hmm..
Anyway. Yes I think it was Maxim’s writers who managed to travel into the future for a review.
Euan, that was fucking hilarious. And even more hilarious was that they were probably right – it was the Black Crowes after all.
its all kicking off over at the Grauniad on a Wave Pictures thread
Apparently, Indie is the “Daily Mail of music – white, middle class and pretentious”
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/08/music_weekly_featuring_the_wav.html
So it seems even the Graun can’t get it right all of the time..
Actually Dylan, what depresses me is that most of them are almost certainly very capable writers indeed, they are required to write pap because of the positioning of the particular rag for which they write. What a fucking waste. No wonder a significant number of professional writers have blogs where they get to write what they actually think.
It’s like we were saying the other day: how much licence would you get to criticise an album if the record company had paid for a full-page advert to promote it on the opposite page from your review.
If you were reviewing a Song, by Toad Records release here on Song, by Toad how much license do you think you’d get to criticise it?
Actually, you could write what you wanted.
Anyway, I am not sure if I see the NME as compromised in that way. I can’t imagine they would interfere in that manner. What I object to is the star fucking, the breathless celebrity watch and the inability or refusal to criticially evaluate what they’re listening to. Heat with tunes.
I was wondering where that thread had begun to unravel a little bit, Matthew. It was our ’simul-post’ at 1:58 and1:59.
I’d completely missed your comment while submitting my own.
So to get this thread back on track.
Wild Beasts sound like Freddie Mercury riding Elton John’s pink grand piano being towed through Liberace’s bathroom by two white tigers with diamante harnesses.
That fucking camp.
Mrs. Toad, stop antagonising those nice people over at the Guardian.
They can’t help it.
(Very entertaining though.)
I haven’t even listened to them yet……I just got caught up in the banter.
I like this! Though may only listen to it when painting my toe nails…..
With marshmallow nail varnish…
Was it marshmallows that Euan found down the back of the sofa?!
No. That would be spelled: Mmmm! With an exclamation mark, see.
Versus the Toadster’s cry when Rod Stewart’s cock is down the back of the sofa : MMMMM!!!!!!!
Phnarf
He’s not going to pay for dinner tonight now is he?
No.
Such vulgarity. Appalling.
Such vulgarity. Fucking brilliant.