News / / 17.02.14

Wild Beasts

Following the embrace of digital tools, Wild Beasts are reflecting the grey skies of the Present Tense

Tom Fleming and Hayden Thorpe are talking about London. We are sitting in a thoughtfully decorated meeting room, an island in a bright grey industrial estate. 

“This feels like a new phase. We feel more like the band that made our first album than ever before – it’s a side effect of living in a big city where every fucker is a musician!” Tom laughs. “We feel more like our own little continent.”

Wild Beasts initially formed in their Lake District hometown Kendal, and after a few line-up shuffles, eventually released their first album Limbo Panto in 2008 to a unique sort of confounded acclaim. Thorpe’s sordid falsetto and carnivalesque jaunts, along with Fleming’s contrasting baritone and lyrics that romanticised lower league football and chips with cheese, gave it a divisive yet inimitable status.

“I think we exist in isolation and Limbo Panto was our mission statement,” Hayden remembers. “I suppose on the new record we are reaffirming those mentalities that galvanised us in the first place. The mental state behind Limbo Panto is still there, but it’s now re-imagined.”

“Making music should be a positive thing,” Tom adds. “Whatever it is, you should be proactive rather than just going against something. ‘Re-imagining’ is a word I would return to. All of my favourite musicians have themes they return to, but communicate in different ways.”

 

 

Wild Beasts have certainly communicated some relatively esoteric sounds to increasingly broad audiences, but in providing such a welcome deviation from the norm they’ve earned an ‘art-rock’ association they perhaps aren’t wholly comfortable with. And following their last two albums, 2009’s Two Dancers and 2011’s Smother, they’ve come to occupy the status of a ‘band’s band’: ripe for beard scratching and over-analysis.

“The problem with being a ‘band’s band’ is it’s like being a ‘man’s man’. You’re desperate to be popular with the ladies but you can’t get their attention,” Hayden suggests playfully. “We don’t just want to be interpretable by musos. I don’t want people to have to pontificate or have to intellectualise our music, that’s not what it’s for. It’s really got a pop philosophy.”

Tom agrees, “our music is as accessible as it can be without dumbing it down. On the other hand I hear a lot of music that is basic but dressed up in ‘arty’ clothing to make it look more involved. We’re trying to make it as simple as possible.”

“We are far more proud of condensing an idea into its simplest form than trying to make something that is detailed and complicated,” Hayden continues. “It’s a far harder task to condense something, also because you’re not necessarily relying on craft, you’re relying on the innate – which is all the more mysterious.”

We talk more about what this means; the dangerous middle ground between condensed, productive pop music and something insincere and commercialised. It was a conflict central to the production of their new album Present Tense, a record which sees the band edge ever closer to those boundaries thanks, in part, to a movement from their traditional sound palette to one more electronically inclined.

 

“I love the idea that you’re pussying out if you don’t play the guitar – like you’re only a man if you’re playing a man’s instrument. The layers of stupidity in that are just unreal”

 

“The dark shadow of ‘sellout’ was looming a little during the recording process,” Hayden considers. “All I can say is, believe or not, it was the nature of the songs and where we were at. It wasn’t a business decision, it was a creative decision. Also to, in some ways, fulfil that prophecy that we do make pop, because at times we have really stretched the skin of what pop is. It felt necessary to say we can do this.”

Tom smiles, “I heard our new single on Radio 1 and I was like ‘Why are they playing his?’ It doesn’t sound like it fits at all! But that’s a great feeling. I still quite like people not knowing what to do with us.”

So are they worried about a backlash? The British populous can be notoriously protective over the guitar, and notably scathing of bands who abandon it. This topic has both Hayden and Tom knowingly guarded, finding the attitude towards British guitar bands humorous and frustrating in equal parts. “The guitar is just part of the tapestry, we just don’t feel the need to be all over it. I find it bizarre that it’s something people focus on so much,” Tom stresses. “I love the idea that you’re pussying out if you don’t play the guitar – like you’re only a man if you’re playing a man’s instrument. The layers of stupidity in that are just unreal.”

Hayden laughs along in agreement. “It’s purely an aesthetic decision. An instrument after a while becomes predictable to you. And the guitar, after a point for me personally, became associated with things we didn’t want on this record.”

This investment in aesthetics is a central philosophy to how they work as a band. We begin discussing the lyrics of Wanderlust, the first single from Present Tense. The lyrics unpick contemporary cultural conflicts, largely the hegemonic influence of class and wealth. It also hones in on British bands leaning on Americanised styles. Many have taken this to be a dig at Arctic Monkeys, but Tom hastens to add “We should clarify the words Arctic Monkeys never left our lips!” Rather, the songs take aim at a wider artistic point about authenticity and reflection.

“It’s definitely about mythologising,” Hayden unpacks, “which is the hardest task: dignifying those elements of your life that you find harder to capture. The point I was trying to make is that it’s all too easy to lean on somebody else’s mythologies because they appear more attractive. I don’t want it to come across as patriotic, I’m not proud to be British, but it’s a strive for sincerity. I think we do make music on an emotional level and I think that requires a sincerity that can only come from an awareness of the world around you. I suppose we wanted o make something that reflected the grey skies, not just the blue ones.”

In addition to the grey skies, their scope of influence is wide and constantly open. While discussing the pace and electronic textures of Present Tense, the internet was a recurring topic. Tom explained this connection as central to the album’s urgency. “We’ve drawn on the present. I think being plugged into everything means the art benefits from looking at the world more, rather than being in a library.”

“I think it affects people’s patience,” Hayden remarks, cautiously building on Tom’s point. “I think we’ve destroyed superstition and we can attain whatever we want. It’s a dangerous place to go because we’re trying to go faster and faster, and I think that’s reflected in this record. You become numb to horrific scenes, just as you become numb to graphic porn. It’s all part of the daily cereal, which is unnerving.”

Technological construction and synthesis sound firmly intrinsic to the album, even down to the production process that saw the band compose on computers before recording with any instruments. Hayden considers the benefits of new technology in terms of provoking something equally new. “We were writing with our eyes at first. It was important for us to return to a learner capacity that presented us with challenges. We were really wary that we could have made another Smother quite easily, so we had to go against our nature.” Their nature is also clearly democratic, working as a band, for the band, with little regard for auteurs. “I think we’re quite old fashioned in that respect,” Tom comments, “we all play a few instruments and we compose together.”

Returning to the railway lines and torn tarmac outside the window, Hayden considers the relationship between technology and the great mundane. “This is a concrete record rather than landscape. We definitely want this to be a period piece. I don’t mind if it sounds aged in 10 years. It should. It came from when it came from.”

 

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Present Tense is out now via Domino Records. Wild Beasts appear at Plisskën Festival, Athens, 6 + 7 June.

wild-beasts.co.uk

Words: Angus Harrison

Photo: Tom Weatherill

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