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

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